Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On the second page of IBEC's submission, it says the "current system of country-by-country patent protection and litigation is ... expensive, time consuming and resource intensive". Will Mr. Gaffney give us an example of the kind of money being talked about when he says it is expensive, relative to a SME? Is it prohibitively expensive, to the point where people decide they cannot afford it and will not do it, or is it manageable? One person's very expensive is another person's small change. I ask for a frame of reference of how it would impact on SMEs, in particular. We know from talking to them that they are under the cosh, not just in the moment, but in general. The smaller the operation, the more likely it is to be under massive pressure.