David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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It has been fascinating for me and, I imagine, for the committee to shine a spotlight on this whole area of intellectual property in institutes of technology and universities. I think the Chair is right about the Technological Higher Education Association, THEA, because we had a global report from the HEA that looked at governance of intellectual property. I have to go back over the report again. It may have mentioned the THEA. I do not, however, remember or recall it being in it. I was interested in this issue and I read the document. It may have been mentioned, but it certainly was not prominent. There was not much public scrutiny in this whole area anyway. For the first time this committee shone a spotlight on it.

If we recall, a number of media reports and press releases went out from organisations working in this world that called into question our competence in and our understanding of this whole area. That was disingenuous because the subtext of what was being said was that we were against commercialising intellectual property. However, there was a complete lack of awareness of our role which is to focus on processes and procedures and then make sure that taxpayers, institutes of technology and universities are protected. The problem with this whole area is that there is a mix of public money and private money. That it not the problem in itself. The issue is how to follow the public money. How much public money goes in to supporting those companies from incubation and conception onwards, as opposed to what the institutes and universities get at the end of it. Getting information was like pulling teeth. We were being pushed back on this issue an awful lot for a while. That concerned me and that is why I kept at this. It is important we get it right.

In regard to governance, there is the HEA, SFI, the THEA - which is the first time I have seen that and I was going to raise it myself anyway - and the policies of the different institutes and universities. The policy was different depending on the institute. Some had robust policies and some had less robust policies. The document that we got from the Minister of Finance, Deputy Donohue, is interesting. Some of it might be okay because it deals with the policy side of it and refers to publishing common national principles. The difficulty I have is that it depends on whether those principles are robust and can be enforced. I am concerned we will gloss over this, make a few cosmetic changes and nothing will really change. I have substantive concerns.

I propose that we hold over any correspondence we have, including from the Minister and the HEA, in regard to intellectual property, and that we come back to it when we decide we will come back to it. We will be in a better position to put questions with as much information as possible. I remember the first day I raised this issue with Dr. Graham Love, the head of the HEA. There were no plans whatsoever to review this area. He was talking about the HEA's work programme on reviewing governance across a range of different areas in the third and fourth level sectors. Commercialising intellectual property was nowhere to be seen.

To be fair to this committee, we have at least shone a spotlight. It has brought us a place where there are more questions than answers. We need to come back to it. I find all of the information we have and the clear sense of what is happening - and all of the different layers to it - fascinating. We will go into private session later to deal with a specific issue in relation to spin-out companies as well as reports we are still waiting on. I know Mr. McCarthy is working on a report on this topic in an institute which we will talk about later. It is fascinating but it has also been an experience in respect of it being almost like pulling teeth to get information. It is unreal.