Mr. Naoise Gaffney:

In addition, we should bear in mind that there is significant scope for Irish companies to grow into this space. This is a niche topic. Any debate on the UPC needs to go hand-in-hand with more general education about IP and why it is important to Irish business. An international innovation index is published every year. Ireland typically does quite well on that index compared with other European countries. Many sub-scores add up to give the overall index. One area where Ireland is quite behind the curve is in its level of IP activity. There is significant scope for Ireland to improve. An important part of that is IP education and reducing costs. If we can reduce costs for Irish companies, it should make it easier for them to be more active in this space and potentially boost our innovation score. If one uses that as a proxy for innovation activity and economic success more generally, then we can achieve that too.