madam president thank you to the rapporteur for this report and my thanks also to the commissioner who recently paid a visit to my constituency of northern ireland where i know she saw some excellent examples of research and innovation
the northern ireland economy is a small and medium-sized enterprise economy ninety-seven of all businesses can be classified in this way yet it is an economy that lags behind other regions of the united kingdom and europe in drawing down money from the framework programme
bureaucracy is cited as the main difficulty and many small businesses are simply more concerned about keeping open the door than they are about the long-term benefits of the research and innovation programme
i believe that the example shown by the aerospace industry in northern ireland is a significant one larger companies mentoring and helping smaller companies to actually access the programme and i would use this opportunity to call upon the commissioner to provide us with radical and new ways for small and medium-sized enterprises to benefit from this very important programme
