The funding would add another two years to the 2.4m Drive for Growth initiative (Directing Research Into Viable Enterprises for Growth), a European project to enhance research and development cooperation across and within selected regions, which is due to wrap up in March 2008.

As part of Drive for Growth, the SWRA has already developed an internet collaboration platform for researchers and companies in the south-west, featuring a database of research and production and a tool for matching R&D requests and offers.

Drive+, as the next phase of project is called, would develop a business framework for sharing and activating expertise and diffuse 'know-how' across the region's industrial base and third-level institutions. The plan is to stimulate peer learning, form R&D and informal clustering.

The Drive programme coordinator and director of the SWRA, John McAleer, said he is hoping to change the perception of R&D as being highlevel and costly. He said "know-how [is] available at the end of a telephone from someone in a third-level institution", but that mechanisms for harnessing goodwill and facilitating interaction had to be developed to put that knowledge to work for companies.

A benchmarking study undertaken at UCC and published as part of the Drive initiative in February found that while 65% of companies in Cork and Kerry reported that they engaged in research and development, only 33% had a dedicated R&D department. A similar number . . . just 34% . . .

had regular contact with either an academic institution or state agency, such as Enterprise Ireland.