Brian Stanley
Ceist:35. Deputy Brian Stanley asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the targets set and actions taken to increase investment by business as a percentage of GDP. [51897/12]
Amharc ar fhreagraThursday, 22 November 2012
Ceisteanna (35)
Freagraí scríofa
The Government’s priority is to get Ireland back to work. The Action Plan for Jobs is designed to help achieve that ambition and, as part of the Action Plan, the Government has set out a series of ambitions which represent key investment and employment goals:
- To become the best small country in which to do business.
- To build world-class clusters in key sectors of opportunity.
- To build an indigenous engine of growth that drives up the export market share of Irish companies.
- To support the creation of 100,000 net new jobs by 2016 with the longer term objective of having 2 million people at work by 2020.
In seeking to deliver on these objectives, the Action Plan for Jobs sets out a major programme of work representing more than 270 individual actions for delivery during 2012. The targets that have been set for the enterprise development agencies relate to the number of jobs to be created and the number of business investments to be won rather than in percentages of GDP. For example, IDA Ireland’s specific targets for job creation and investment for the period 2010 to 2014 are set out in the Agency’s Strategy document “Horizon 2020” as follows:
- 105,000 new jobs (62,000 in IDA supported companies and a further 43,000 indirect).
- 640 Investments.
- 50% of investments located outside Dublin and Cork.
- 20% of greenfield investments originating from emerging markets by 2014.
- Annual client spend of €1.7bn in R, D&I by 2014.
In the case of Enterprise Ireland, while the Agency is working on a number of areas to increase business investment and extend its direct financial support to grow companies, the targets set relate to numbers rather than a percentage of GDP. By way of illustration, some of their targets for 2012 include:
- To support 200 significant investment projects by client companies (i.e. projects entailing a total investment of €500,000 or more) has been set in the Action Plan for Jobs and is expected to be achieved.
- To support 95 High Potential Start-Ups (HPSUs) during 2012, which will be the highest number of HPSUs ever supported.
- In relation to R&D, the goal is to have at least 740 companies spending at least €100,000 on R&D per annum.
Additionally, Enterprise Ireland has focused on the development of a Seed and Venture Capital industry in Ireland, with recent activity including the introduction of a new Seed fund, the launch of the Development Capital Scheme and the second call for Innovation Fund Ireland.
With regard to investment in research and development (R&D), Ireland’s goal under the Europe 2020 Strategy is to improve the conditions for R&D with the aim of raising combined public and private investment levels to 2.5% of GNP (c. 2.0% of GDP) by 2020 and we are currently on track to reach that target. The latest available data show that the research intensity rate for 2011 is now estimated at 2.17% of GNP (1.77% of GDP) with Business Expenditure on R&D amounting to 1.52% of GNP, which is equivalent to 1.2% of GDP.