Dr. James Browne:

NUI Galway has received its fair share. I am satisfied we have procedures in place. There is a complication here. Let us be frank and honest about it. Intellectual property is created in a situation where the individual who creates it is almost certainly essential to its exploitation. In a university, it would be lovely if we could say to somebody "you bought that IP, you now leave the stage" and the intellectual property can be transferred across the room to somebody else. That cannot happen because, by and large, the individual who created the intellectual property is almost always essential to its exploitation - not always but almost always. That does create an issue for the institution.