Mr. Diarmuid Collins:

Prior to the university's purchase of the IMI, we would have had very good programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the business area but we did not have an executive education arm similar to other universities, so we had a gap there. The IMI spoke to a number of universities from 2009 to 2012 about it getting more formal accreditation for its programmes. For its rankings and accreditation it needed to have more formal linkages with a university. Following discussions with UCC, the IMI's board chose to enter into an alliance, which we had over the past number of years. We ended up delivering a number of joint programmes between us and in 2016 as we spoke about earlier, we purchased the IMI.