Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 19 April 2018
208. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation the most recent data for Ireland’s ranking in each international table for research and development; and the target originally set by the Government for each such ranking in tabular form. [17309/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraInnovation 2020, Ireland’s strategy for research and development, science and technology, sets out Ireland’s ambition to be a Global Innovation Leader. Benchmarking Ireland’s performance against other comparable economies is a key tool to enable the delivery of that ambition and to enable us to develop steps to improve our comparative performance.
The European Commission annually produces the European Innovation Scoreboard which sets out Member States’ performance against a range of indicators and assists countries in tracking progress and identifying priorities. The 2017 Scoreboard was published by the European Commission in June 2017, with Ireland placed 10th overall and categorised as a Strong Innovator, performing above the EU average. The Commission noted that Ireland’s performance increased strongly (6.9 percentage points).
Ireland remains the overall leader in the innovators dimension which demonstrates how innovative Irish SMEs are as European leaders in product, process and marketing innovation. In addition, Ireland achieved first place in the employment impacts dimension which captures employment in knowledge intensive activities and in fast-growing sectors.
Ireland also performs very well in the Human Resources dimension, in particular in the sub-indicator of population with tertiary education where Ireland scores higher than all of those Member States in the Innovation Leader group.
While Ireland has not set specific targets for other international rankings, my Department closely monitors performance on a number of other indices and scoreboards, such as:
The Global Innovation Index (June 2017) in which Ireland is ranked 10th out of 128 countries. Within this, Ireland is placed first for knowledge diffusion and second for knowledge impact.
In the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (June 2017) Ireland is ranked 6th out of 63 countries, and is recognised as the second most competitive economy within the EU and Euro area. Ireland achieved top ranking position in a number of important sub indicators including investment incentives, labour productivity, flexibility and adaptability, and attracting and retaining talent.
According to IBM Global Location Trends (August 2017), Ireland remains the number one destination for value for money from foreign direct investment.
With regard to scientific rankings, Ireland is placed 11th globally for overall scientific research quality (Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators, June 2017), achieving second place in nanotechnology, animal and dairy, and immunology.
