IRELAND IS placed in a middle tier of “innovation followers” in a new ranking of EU states published by research commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.
As Ms Geoghegan-Quinn called on all EU states to intensify their investment in research and development (R&D), new data showed that the economic crisis may be hampering investment in innovation.
While the commissioner said R&D was “an easy area for cutbacks” in a time of crisis, she said the record proved that countries that continued to make RD investments emerged quicker from recession.
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn, who has made the drive to increase commercial investment in R&D a priority of her five-year mandate, insisted that Europe had significant work to do to catch up on heavy R&D investors, such as the US.
She said progress was required in respect of international patenting, public-private research linkages, the number of researchers engaged in innovation work, and business R&D expenditure.
Her aim is to boost employment by improving R&D systems to foster a “research to retail” culture in Europe so that manufacturing work that flows from research is carried out within the union.
An EU scorecard – ie a ranking system to assess countries according to 29 innovation-related indicators – placed Ireland in a middle rank behind “innovation leaders” but ahead of “moderate innovators” and “catching-up countries”.
The indicators suggest that Ireland’s innovation performance is above the EU average, although the rate of improvement is just below the EU average.
The assessment suggested that Europe’s innovation leaders are Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Britain, with Germany and Finland improving their performance fastest.
