Professor Mark Ferguson:

Very good. I will start with the easy questions and then I will pass over to my colleagues to answer the more difficult ones. On the intellectual property, IP, protocol, Ireland has such a protocol. It is agreed across Government about how intellectual property is dealt with. In general it is the following: Science Foundation Ireland is Government funded and therefore if we are funding it, the intellectual property belongs to the State. We give that intellectual property to the university or public institution that we are funding. Science Foundation Ireland makes no claim itself on the intellectual property, but if we were funding something at UCD or Trinity or UCC, we give that intellectual property to the university and we require the university to exploit it based on the national protocol.

In the case of collaborative research projects, it is very simple; the more one pays, the more one owns. If there is a joint funder with industry - let us say they are paying for 10% of it - then the State owns it, and they may have some right of first refusal to license it. On the other hand, if they are paying for 90% of it and we are paying for 10% of it, then they own it, and we have some rights to use it for research, or for more wide-spread uses. It is a very logical protocol. It is a piece of Government legislation, and it effectively uses the principles that I have just outlined. However, Science Foundation Ireland makes no claim on any intellectual property. We do not get in the way of the exploitation; we give it to the university, and we mandate that the university, institute of technology or whatever public body, must exploit it.

A member asked about energy from the land, waste products, and so on. I mention two things. The Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy Ireland, which Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, funds and is based at University College Cork, has within it a biogas project. This is about taking plant material - I was going to say crops, but it could be things from forestry, waste material or whatever - and seeing if biogas could be used as an augmentation to other renewable energies. Wind, for example, may be intermittent, but one may be able to fill in some of the gaps in renewable energies in this way. That is one area, and I would be very happy to pass the details on to the committee.

I also mention one of our recently-funded research centres, which is called Beacon. That is based at UCD, and is about the circular economy, or the bioeconomy. This is not so much about energy; it uses waste products from milk, which one has to pay to dispose of. Through a process of going through filters and changing the nature of that material, one can actually turn it into the building blocks for some of the plastic industry, for example. One thus has three benefits; waste is cut down; the farmer or processor does not have to pay for the disposal of that waste; and some money is made from turning a waste product into something for the circular economy. Many circular economy research centres around the world do that for energy; the unique thing about the one in Ireland is that it is not focused on energy, but on making the building blocks for commonly used materials, which is probably a more viable business than trying to build on the energy space and biogas. Again, I can make introductions there. I will now hand over to some of my colleagues. Professor Doohan may like to answer some of the other questions.