Minister English, the Taoiseach, and Minister Bruton pictured at Innovation Showcase
As more than 2,000 people from the world of business, science and research attended the second annual Innovation Showcase this week, Government launched a new five-year strategy for the science and innovation sector. Innovation 2020 sets out targets to increase funding and jobs in the research and development, science and technology sectors.
This innovation plan is a key element of the Government’s overall jobs strategy, Enterprise 2025 aimed at building a new economy based on exports and enterprise, and delivering full employment on a sustainable basis.
Innovation 2020 aims to build on the significant successes delivered by the Government’s science strategy over the past decade, which has seen Ireland dramatically improve its performance globally in this area. The next phase of the strategy is aimed at building on existing infrastructures and achieving ambitious private-public collaborations.
Increase R&D investment to €5 billion per year
The headline target for the strategy is to increase total investment in R&D in Ireland, led by the private sector, to 2.5% of GNP. On current official projections, this would mean that over €5billion will be invested per year in R&D by the private and public sectors by 2020, almost double current levels of investment, which stood at €2.9billion in 2014.
Other funding targets include drawing down €1.25bn funding under the EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020, and a new programme of funding for Frontier Research, providing resilience and responsiveness to meet new challenges or opportunities as they emerge.
Attracting talent in research and third level education
Attracting talent is also a key target in the strategy, which aims to increase the number of research personnel in enterprise by 60% to 40,000. In terms of academic research, the strategy aims to increase the number of research masters and PhD enrolments by 30% to 2,250; with a target of 40% increase in the share of PhD researchers transferring from SFI research teams to industry.
A successor to the Programme for Research in third level institutions will be rolled out to include investment in the creation of new, and the maintenance and upgrading of existing, facilities and equipment and ensure full utilisation
Collaboration between private sector, high education and public sector
In the coming years areas of strategic commercial opportunity for Irish-based enterprises will be identified, which will be fed into the next research prioritisation exercise in 2018.
In addition, challenge-centric research will be initiated to stimulate solutions-driven collaborations bringing together enterprise, higher education institutions and public sector to identify and address national challenges.
The network of Research Centres will be further developed, building critical mass and addressing enterprise needs. Ireland's participation in International Research Organisations will be expanded – we will apply for full membership of ELIXIR, and we will explore membership options for CERN and ESO
Fore more information
Read the full Innovation 2020 strategy.