Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 15 Oct 1997

Vol. 481 No. 5

Written Answers - Education Funding.

Richard Bruton

Ceist:

125 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science the expenditure on research and development within the higher education sector in each of the past six years and to date in 1997; and the sources of funding for this expenditure, in particular the contribution by the Exchequer and by the private business sectors. [16534/97]

Minister for Education and Science (Mr. Martin)

Prior to 1995 the only source of information in relation to the Deputy's question was occasional surveys carried out by Forfás. Surveys were carried out in 1992 and 1994 and show the following picture for research and development activities across all disciplines in the third level sector:

	Total	Exchequer Contribution	Private Sector
1992	£73.0 million	£48.8 million	£6.5 million
1994	£95.3 million	£60.1 million	£9.0 million

Since 1995, Forfás have collected the information requested by the Deputy as part of their annual science budget survey. This survey only covers activities in the natural science and engineering areas and the figures are as follows:

	Total	Exchequer Contribution	Private Sector
1995	£54.0 million	£40.4 million	£2.8 million
1996	£63.6 million	£46.4 million	£4.9 million
1997	£67.6 million	£35.8 million*	£14.2 million

*The drop from previous years is accounted for by a technical adjustment in the method of calculating the amount of the Higher Education Authority block grant spent on research and development.