Change will take time - Cowen

POLITICAL REACTION:TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has said that he is determined to implement the recommendations of the Innovation Taskforce but made no reference to either funding or to a timeframe in his speech launching the report.

The Taoiseach portrayed its implementation as an imperative. “It can be done, it must be done,” he said. He believed that the 120,000 potential new jobs identified in the report could be created.

Mr Cowen said he was fully committed to the report’s overarching goal of making Ireland a global innovation hub. However, he warned that to effect such a change would take a considerable period of time, marked changes of mindset, as well as the adoption of new approaches.

“It won’t happen overnight. It will require a prioritisation of resources at a difficult time,” he said at the launch in the Science Gallery at TCD.

He said the country would need to “refocus and reinvigorate” all parts of what he described as the “innovation ecosystem”.

“One of Ireland’s best attributes is our ability to be agile and to make quick decisions to get ahead of the game. We need to use that quality now, as we have in the past.” Mr Cowen did not take any questions after his speech.

One of the key recommendations in the report is that the innovation fund of up to €500 million announced in the Smart Economy framework of December 2008 be released as soon as possible. This will provide venture-capital-type funding.

However, the Government has yet to say when this fund will be made available.

Fine Gael’s spokeswoman on innovation Deirdre Clune said that the project was doomed from the start as there was no timetable or no budget.

“What we really want to know is what the Government plans to do next. Fianna Fáil has had 13 years to build a dynamic and smart economy. It has singularly failed. So there is little hope that any of this plan’s recommendations will ever be realised under Fianna Fáil,” she said.

She said she had read the Taoiseach’s statement hoping to find a timetable or implementation plan.

“All I see is that he’s using it as a marketing tool as he and his Ministers indulge in their annual St Patrick’s Day globe-trotting exercise,” added Ms Clune.