Professor Dolores O'Riordan:

I specifically want to respond to the question about the return on investment. In respect of looking at permeation and trying to get various nutrients or bio-actives out of it, the question concerned the return on investment. A big change that I have seen working in innovation and developing dairy ingredients and added value is that the starting point for the research is sitting down with the research leaders from companies and commercial leaders of the companies. The very first exercise that is done is to estimate the return on investment. This is a big sea change in the research environment that I have seen over the past 15 years. That is exercise number one. If we are putting a certain amount of money into research, they want to see what the products, sales and margin will be. This has been very important in driving the food industry on.

Ms McCormack's statement mentioned Food for Health Ireland. We have made a submission for the third round of that. That has been an example of producers and researchers working together to give true commercial value to companies, so that has been a key change in having the mindset of researchers in giving true added value. It is going to the large producers and not necessarily back to the primary producers, but that has been a very positive change in the research landscape.