Áine Collins (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Tús programme deals with people who may have never received work experience or do not have a third level education. They were traditionally builders or tradesmen. They were happy to become involved in community projects to keep up their skills to be ready to re-enter employment.

The commercialisation of technology is a significant problem and has involved an expenditure of €20 billion in recent years. The committee has highlighted the fact that only an educational institution in Ireland can draw down EU funding. This is the only OECD country where this is an issue. If a person were to set up as an approved research and technical organisation, he or she should be permitted to draw down funding. Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland have been involved in a successful pilot project in this regard which has brought together multinationals and small businesses. The problem is that in order to draw down funding, these projects must be attached to a university and there are the issues about ownership of the patent. There is no such issue in Canada. Mr. O'Sullivan will be familiar with the situation in MIT in Boston which did away with it ten years ago. It stated it was storing its shelves and not commercialising information. We need to address this issue. There is a place for intensive research in colleges and institutions, but there is also a place for collaboration with industry in order to commercialise technology. We are losing multinational companies to Israel and other places where it is easier to do this. Colleges are trying to put in place onerous licensing agreements. I know of a multinational in my constituency which developed an idea over 18 months. It was told by the college that research would take 18 months. We need to address this issue. The report concluded that the Government needed to fill the gaps in that there was a lot of information but it was difficult for people to find it.