Professor Diarmuid Hegarty:

On the point made earlier about providing better remuneration for research students, it strikes me that the EU may be able to assist in that regard. In Griffith College we are constantly raising funds from our alumni for venture capital investments. In the past, we found we were supported by the tax relief available for investment in risk enterprise. That is being restricted more and more, and the restriction is coming from Europe. That is a retrograde step and we need to get that message across to Europe. The concern from Europe's point of view is to eliminate, as far as possible, any grants that might have a distorting effect on competition. In fact, these grants would encourage research of an applied nature. They would also encourage investment of risk capital in that research. There must be, therefore, some kind of conviction on the part of the investors that the project is actually viable. For instance, there is now a proposal that the tax relief be reduced from 40% to 20%, which would kill that source of funds, namely, venture capital for incubation centres.

That is a practical thing people might focus on. The focus is in Europe and with the European Commission.