Dr. Frank O'Mara:

I thank the Senator. We will certainly make that fact sheet available to the committee tomorrow. As he probably saw in our written statement, most of our past research was in respect of hemp and its potential use as a fibre source for paper, energy or whatever. Our main interest related to how one would grow the crop and the parameters in that regard. The more recent relevant research we have relates to the food or feed characteristics of the crop. I ask Mr. Spink to expand on the details of that. Before he does so, I will point out what we are trying to do in this area.

We are trying to create facilities, the infrastructure and a support system for entrepreneurs and innovators who could use any food or crop. We have good facilities in our research centre in Ashtown, dealing with the extraction and processing of foods. We have invested approximately €10 million over the past three to four years in what we call prepared consumer foods facilities. We have good facilities that could be used by people at a testing or small manufacturing scale for processing grains, seeds or whatever it might be, purifying them or extracting components from them, and for packaging them. There has been very little work with hemp at the facility but the resource is available. We have good expertise relating to the characterisation of seeds, feed or whatever it might be, so that we can identify their properties. That expertise is being brought to bear on some projects. I mentioned U-Protein. Mr. Spink knows more about than me. He might outline investment in that research.