Ireland/innovation score board

eircomtribunal

Ireland performs poorly on a recent EC innovation score board, saved mainly by its high volume of high tech exports. The EC report is worth a read, has a short paragraph on all the countries

Ireland

Ireland’s overall innovation performance based on the EIS, results in an 11th place rank out of 25 EU member states. Ireland mixes above average and below average performance in many of the indicator groups, with however data missing for indicators related to firm activity. Its good performance is due to high tech export shares that are 68% above the EU average. Ireland performs well on the innovation drivers, ranking in 8th place. This is due to excellent performance on the supply of new S&E graduates and above average results for tertiary education.

Most worryingly, business R&D shows both an absolute and relative decline over time, falling from 0.90% of GDP in 1998 to 0.77% in 2004. This decline is not matched by an increase in public R&D, which has grown only modestly, from 0.35% of GDP in 1998 to 0.40% in 2004. Ireland must make the transition from an economy where foreign investment played a large role, particularly in the ICT sector in order to serve the EU market, to an economy based on innovation. Many indicators point to serious difficulties in making this transition. The share of exports from high technology products has fallen by 25% between 2001 and 2003. The consistent decline in business R&D is also a major challenge, coupled to the decline of the share of university R&D funded by the business sector. Venture capital supply has also fallen from 136% of the EU average in 2000 to 92% of the average in 2003. These developments suggest that Ireland could be entering a difficult transition phase towards developing domestic R&D and innovation capabilities.

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P.S.:
Not directly related, but worth to make a mental note, when our experts will wonder in the years to come, why a poor small ( 10 million) new entrant like Hungary, will further pull away from us in the broadband league:

Budapest/Luxembourg, 12 January 2006

Hungary: EUR 190 million for modernisation of telecommunication services

The European Investment Bank (EIB) lends EUR 190 million for providing telecommunication broadband infrastructure in Hungary.
...
The loan will finance the extension of the geographical coverage of the existing Hungarian broadband services and the increase in the number of broadband connections, and their capacity and performance. Magyar Telekom, the major fixed-line and mobile phone Company in Hungary, is the project promoter.

from the EC here

eircomtribunal

In the Indo there is a reference to the slightly dated data just published in the new Eurostat yearbook:

Ireland's broadband ranks fifth lowest
Ailish O'Hora

IRELAND has ranked fifth lowest in a new broadband penetration survey of the 25 European States from the European Commission's statistical agency Eurostat.

According to the Eurostat Yearbook 2005, Ireland ranks the second lowest of the 15 pre-accession EU member states with penetration at 1.7pc, followed only by Greece with new members Latvia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia in the worst positions.

The figures refer to penetration levels in July 2004 and since then the number of broadband subscribers here has risen to over 250,000. Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands have the highest penetration rates while in all countries, the rate has more than doubled from 2002 to 2004, according to the figures...

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eircomtribunal

MEP Gay Mitchell took up the Eurostat publication. See article in siliconrepublic.

Broadband failure spells impending disaster

13.01.2006 - Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell has indicated that the broadband saturation level in Ireland is one of the lowest in the EU and has warned that the poor availability of broadband here is an impending disaster for the Irish economy.

Mitchell pointed to Euro Stat figures that show...

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