Kelly blasts Government record on innovation

Issued : Thursday 18 March, 2010

Munster MEP Alan Kelly has labeled the EU report highlighting Ireland's poor level of innovation as a "wake up call".

An EU-wide survey has found Ireland to be in the category of "innovation followers" and just ninth out of the 27 member states.

Kelly said: "Ireland needs to be at the forefront of innovation not trailing behind the rest of Europe. We can only drive growth by investing in key areas such research and innovation.

"As a small open economy, Ireland needs to be at the forefront of new enterprise development and this can only be achieved by driving innovation and research.

"Europe is having difficulty catching up with the US when it comes to innovation yet Ireland is struggling to catch up with Europe.

"It should be our ambition to be the best in the world and our performance to date paints a worrying picture.

"One major issue is access to high speed broadband. You are not going to attract investment into Ireland if our broadband grid is 80 times slower than India or Japan.

"Other European countries are prioritizing broadband roll-out but we continue to ignore the competitive strategic advantage it would provide.

"We must re-focus our efforts and target broadband as the key driver in new enterprise creation.

"The report shows sharp declines across all areas of innovation, including in Non-R&D innovation expenditures (-5.7%), Innovative SMEs collaborating with others (-7.0%), and SMEs introducing product or process innovations (-3.3%).

"This Government needs to step up its innovative and technological game if it is serious about getting us out of this recession any time soon."