‘Limited benefits’ for research spend

IRELAND does not appear to be benefiting from the spending on research and the work of its university and research institutes, the EU warns in a report on innovation.

While Irish researchers are very successful in winning EU funds and the country has had the highest growth in the EU in hi-tech and knowledge-intensive employment, this is not feeding through into patents.

The report suggests this may be as multinationals are licensing any inventions from their Irish-basedenterprises in their home countries instead.