Professor Willie Donnelly:

I want to answer because it is important for the public. Deputy Cullinane is jumping to the assumption that Red Hat paid €63.9 million for a piece of technology that was developed in WIT. If the Deputy looks at the accounts of the company, it will show that the auditors valued the IP that was transferred from WIT at €240,000. Why would a company pay €63.9 million for a piece of software that was worth €240,000? It did not, what it paid for was a product that was the leading product in the marketplace globally at the time it was acquired, which was developed through investment in FeedHenry. It also paid for a global customer base that was not there when the company was set up in the institute of technology. That investment was investment for a company that had the same name as the company that was started by ourselves but it was a completely different company.