Mr. Brian Ogilvie:

IT Carlow places a strong emphasis on research, development and innovation. We try to utilise the resources, infrastructure and research expertise of the institute to build entities which can move through technology transfer processes into industry. We work with entrepreneurs and start-up companies. We recognise the continuing need to enhance and expand business liaison, regional involvement and commercialisation activities as an essential part of the overall strategy of the institute.

Our enterprise development framework looks at developing spin-in companies which come from outside the institute and spin-out companies which develop out of research activities within the college. There is a diagram before the committee. It shows in green the potential funding areas from which we can source finance to allow these activities to happen. In red are shown the training programmes and support structures which allow companies to develop. These are located in specialised buildings which are focused solely on enterprise development. Projects emerge from a variety of finance and funding sources, including INTERREG. We have operated a WISE project on sustainable companies in the engineering sector. That project has been completed for about 12 months. We are using Enterprise Ireland's funding structure, including innovation vouchers, to work with small and medium enterprises to develop a sense of innovation and provide them with a taste of the research expertise we have at the IT.

We have run the enterprise platform programme for seven years. We bring potential entrepreneurs to the institute to develop knowledge-based, export-focused companies. The end goal is to develop high potential start-up units. The new structure of the enterprise platform programmes consists of the new frontiers programme from Enterprise Ireland, which is in its second year. It is the second year we have run it in collaboration with Waterford Institute of Technology. Another programme we have just launched is called Inspire, which stands for initiating pathways for researchers, entrepreneurs and SMEs. The idea behind the programme is to get SMEs involved in innovation and recognise the importance of research, development and the exploration of new avenues to build new business platforms into their companies.

New infrastructure at IT Carlow includes a research, development and innovation building which is under construction. It will be ready for occupation in January 2014. We will consolidate all our research groups in the building. At IT Carlow we have what we call COREs which are centres of research and enterprise. These represent concentrated areas of expertise in specific fields, including industrial design, security, environmental sciences and computer gaming. By consolidating these research groups with incubation and start-up companies in one building we hope to add to the enterprise development structure at the institute.