Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The system in Ireland is based on academic institutions. There are other models like the Fraunhofer model in Germany which act as stand-alone entities. We have the Tyndall National Institute but it is aligned to an academic institution. I am not sure how to answer the Deputy's question other than to say that if a company is innovative and arguably has a relationship with a State agency, the chances are that if it is going to look for funding, it will already have a relationship with one of the State agencies and will find its way to one of the Enterprise Ireland or national contact points to seek those opportunities to draw down funding as per the SME targets about which I spoke earlier. The company will already be alive to those opportunities so we do not think there is any need to change the model in that sense.