Matt Brennan
Ceist:11 Mr. M. Brennan asked the Minister for the Environment the plans, if any, he has to increase the State's input into environmental research. [12565/95]
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Environmental Research.
Michael J. Noonan
Ceist:42 Mr. Noonan (Limerick West) asked the Minister for the Environment the plans, if any, he has to increase the State's input into environmental research. [12564/95]
Noel Dempsey
Ceist:93 Mr. Dempsey asked the Minister for the Environment the plans, if any, he has to increase the State's current input into environmental research. [14277/95]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 11, 42 and 93 together.
Direct annual Government expenditure on environmental research was just under 2 per cent of the total research and development budget of £91 million for all sectors in 1993. Environmental research and development as a percentage of total public R and D budgets varied from 0.5 per cent to over 4 per cent in OECD countries generally in 1991, the latest year for which I have statistics.
The Government programme includes a commitment to improve financial supports for research on the environment. Specific funding is now being provided in this area under the environmental monitoring and research and development sub-programme of the Operational Programme for Environmental Services, 1994-99.
The Environmental Protection Agency has published a discussion document on a national programme and priorities for environmental research. In launching the document, I recognised the need for, and value of, investment in environmental research and development, and the importance to a country with limited means of making maximum use of the resources and expertise available. The Environmental Protection Agency, in accordance with its statutory responsibility for environmental research co-ordination and its administration of the relevant operational programme funding, is well placed to secure the best use of resources. I will keep the level of financial supports under review as the agency further develops its role in this area.
Does the Minister agree that the State contribution of 2 per cent of the total investment in environmental research for all sectors is a miserly amount and belies the commitment of his Government to improving our environment?
No, I would not. I will give the House the figures for comparable countries to ours. For example, as indicated in the reply we contribute 2 per cent to environmental research; Japan invests 0.5 per cent of its total research budget in the environment; France 0.7 per cent and the United Kingdom 1.7 per cent. The House will observe that the level ranges from a low of 0.5 per cent to a maximum investment of 4.1 per cent in the case of the Netherlands.
In this respect I do not consider it a good idea for us to compare ourselves with countries such as France or Japan. I am interested to know what is the figure for Germany. Surely in a country such as ours, on which so many jobs depend on a clean, green image, we should not compare ourselves with countries such as France or Japan. We have very much more to lose or gain by investment in research into environmental protection and in clean technologies. We should not cite the levels of investment in countries such as Japan and France as constituting the norm or basis on which we shall decide how much we will invest in environmental protection. Will the Minister give the House a guarantee that that investment figure will be revised upwards in future?
There is a continuous review and new funding mechanisms are being put in place. Before giving the House details of those mechanisms, I would like to know why Deputy Dempsey feels we should compare ourselves with Germany and not with France.
Germany is one of the leaders in producing clean environmental technology.
Germany is the world leader, and it would be peculiar if we sought to be on a par with the best.
I do not agree with that at all.
We strive to spend money effectively but we cannot expect to have the resources to allow us compete with Germany. We might more readily compare our investment level with that of Canada where it is 1.6 per cent, or with Austria — which regards itself as a very pro-environment country — where the comparable figure is 1.8 per cent. There are new funding mechanisms now available to us. The Environmental Protection Agency is administering the research and development sub-programme of the Operational Programme for Environmental Services 1994-99 which provides for expenditure of some £5 million on two separate measures, namely, environmental sustainable resource management and cleaner production. Five research projects under those headings are already under way and details of contracts for an additional six are being finalised. Certainly I want to maximise the levels of money available for environmental research generally, as I did when I served in the Department of Health. I substantially increased the moneys available for health research which was of benefit to an economy like ours. We should not play down our significant achievements by saying we are not doing well enough if we do not equal the best. We should accept that, compared to many well placed economically advanced countries, we are doing quite well.
My approach to this matter is philosophically different from that of the Minister. We should aim not just to be good but to be as good as the best. I have been trying to get information from various bodies, including the Department of the Environment, on a particular clean technology process, for reducing waste and have been unable to find anybody who has done research on it here. Nobody seems to have information on the process of vitrification, nor is anybody looking for that information. My understanding is that if it were introduced here — and there are people interested in introducing it — it would cut down on the amount of landfill sites we need. My point is that we do not have the information we need, and we should have it. Our commitment to environmental standards and their importance to our economy mean we should be spending more not less, in percentage terms, than countries like Germany.
I accept what the Deputy says about the availability of and research on a particular technology. We cannot research the same range of subjects as the more developed economies which have a factor of many times ours in money terms to spend on research. We have to target our research and we do that very effectively. We get much better value for the money we spend on research here than they do in virtually any other country.
The Environmental Protection Agency has a new competence in evaluating and administering research. I invite the Deputy, if he has queries, to direct them to the Environmental Protection Agency. If he gets no satisfaction, he may direct his queries back to me and I will raise them with the Environmental Protection Agency. My objective is, first, to maximise the total resource available for environmental research here and, equally, to get the best value for that relatively small resource, as it is bound to be in an economy the size of ours. That is the overriding principle I would bring to bear in my administration of environmental research.
Will the Minister agree that polluted watercourses are one of our greatest environmental problems? Has there been any contact between the Department of the Environment and the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry in regard to a study carried out in Monaghan with INTERREG funding, none of the recommendations of which has been implemented? It seems that what is everybody's business is nobody's business between the Department of the Environment and the Department of Agriculture.
Although I share a constituency with my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry, I think he is well able to account for his own administration of the REPS programme. I have had discussions with him on co-ordination of our efforts. For example, an investment programme from the sanitary services provision of my Department will be dovetailed with a targeted investment programme under the REPS programme from his Department so that we can take a water catchment overview of investment. It will mean I am not solving, through investment in waste water treatment, part of a problem that is not being cleaned up on the agricultural side. That level of co-ordination is ongoing.