Millions wasted in R&D expenditure, says Green Party

Green Party Enterprise spokesperson Eamon Ryan TD has today claimed that taxpayers' money is being wasted on Research and Development schemes that result in little return for the Irish economy.

"We need to reduce our overdependence on the construction and foreign manufacturing sectors by investing in research and development within indigenous Irish service and manufacturing companies," said Mr Ryan.

"However, much of the state's investment in this area is being wasted. Little or no monitoring is taking place of what return we are getting on the millions the Government is handing over to research institutions.

"One of the main state supports is the Commercialisation Fund, which is supposed to help create innovative new R&D products that are commercially viable and delivered to the marketplace.

"Unfortunately, the experience to date is that millions of taxpayers' money is being handed over each year with no real assessment of the actual commercial outcome.

"To ensure a research product becomes commercially developed, there needs to be private sector involvement; unfortunately the investments made by Enterprise Ireland who manage the fund are almost exclusively spent within University research departments.

"The absence of industry collaboration was severely criticised by independent consultants as far back as 2004 in the 'Technopolis' report, yet the fund continues to focus almost exclusively on funding academic research with negligible input from commercial parties.

"The results of this mismanagement speak for themselves. Of the 22 projects funded in 2006 at a total cost of nearly €17m to the state, almost half of the projects have delivered little more than licence options, evaluation options and start-up companies – none of which go any way to realising the objective of the scheme, namely the introduction of new R&D products to the market.

"The Minister's failure to change funding schemes that everyone acknowledges are not working is a remarkable example of Government incompetence.

"He seems to be living in the virtual spin of the Fianna Fáil press office rather than the real economic world."