Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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78. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the estimated cost in 2024 if the budget for the innovation voucher scheme were doubled. [29936/23]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Innovation Voucher Programme is funded by my Department, though Enterprise Ireland.

The Innovation Voucher Programme is designed to build links between Ireland's public knowledge providers (higher education institutions and research performing bodies) and small businesses and help to create a cultural shift in the small business community's approach to innovation. The €5,000 vouchers encourage companies and public knowledge providers to work together on specific innovation questions and projects related to a company’s needs and is available to the broadest number of companies. The nature of these projects will be such that they transfer knowledge that is new, thereby enabling a company to use this newly acquired knowledge to innovate a product, production process or service.

The Innovation Voucher Programme budget outturn for 2022 was €1,898,526 which comes from capital expenditure. Data on innovation vouchers is collated on the basis of the time of redemption of the voucher, rather than the date of issue. Based on the 2022 outturn data, a doubling of the expenditure on innovation vouchers in 2024 is estimated to cost €3,797,052.