TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen will this morning launch a €500 million “Innovation Fund Ireland” at a breakfast meeting with a dozen Irish business contacts at the New York Stock Exchange.
Mr Cowen will be in the US until Wednesday and is scheduled to do television interviews with Bloomberg TV, PBS and CNN.
He will meet Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue.
The Taoiseach will also announce the opening of the first Irish consulate in the southern US, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Mr Cowen said the purpose of his visit was to convey the message that “Ireland has turned the corner after several difficult years” and to listen to and seek the advice of key US business leaders.
Mr Cowen will say this morning in New York that Ireland had “returned to economic growth and the outlook is positive”.
He will predict that “a new economic order” will emerge from the recession and tell his audience he wants Ireland to be able to provide its citizens “with enhanced opportunities and living standards”.
The goal of the fund is to increase the size of small to medium-size companies already in Ireland, and to persuade start-ups with the potential of becoming future Googles and Microsofts to base themselves in Ireland.
Half of the €500 million will be provided by the State. The NPRF (National Pension Reserve Fund) will provide €125 million.
Enterprise Ireland will provide another €125 million for the fund, while the other €250 million is expected to come from venture capitalists.
Mr Cowen will tell his audience at the New York Stock Exchange that the fund is “a crucial pillar of our economic renewal” and that he would make Ireland “a honey pot for the best European entrepreneurs”.
His speech describes Ireland as a “global innovation hub” and he four times repeats the words “the best place in Europe”.
Mr Cowen’s goal is to make Ireland the best place for transforming research and knowledge into products and services, for starting and growing an innovative company, for relocating or expanding a small to medium-size business, and for research-intensive multinationals to co-operate with each other.
“The Ireland of the future will be a smart, high-value, export-led economy” that will create “the products and services of tomorrow for a world market,” the Taoiseach will say.
The Government’s Innovation Taskforce has estimated the strategy could create 120,000 jobs over the next decade.
The fund was foreseen in Building Ireland’s Smart Economy, the medium-term plan announced by Mr Cowen in December 2008, but was on hold because conditions were not favourable for raising venture capital.
The fund will make the first of several public calls for “expressions of interest” in early September.
Israel is the model for the plan cited most often, though Britain, Canada and Finland have tried similar strategies.
By matching venture capital, the Israeli government has created more start-ups than any country in the world, and there are more Israeli companies listed on the Nasdaq than from the EU, India, Japan, China, Singapore and Korea combined.
Ireland proposes to spend twice as much as Israel on its innovation fund.