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Jobs Minister Richard Bruton together with Research and Innovation Minister Sean Sherlock today announced new structures to make it easier to commercialise and ultimately create jobs from ideas developed through publicly-funded research, which currently receives total funding of over €800million per year.

Today’s announcement represents the delivery of a key commitment in the Programme for Government and the Action Plan for Jobs 2012.

The new structures aim to encourage more businesses to commercialise R&D by ensuring that they can access the results of State-funded R&D with greater ease.

Some of the structures include a new Central Technology Transfer Office, to act as a one-stop shop for businesses seeking to use intellectual property deriving from publicly-funded research and standardised intellectual property terms, which will facilitate easy-to-set-up agreements between businesses and researchers.

Over the past ten years, Ireland has built up a substantial infrastructure, expertise and international reputation for scientific research and innovation. In 2003 Ireland was ranked 36th in the world for quality of scientific research output; in 2010 we were 20th. In 2000 our total spend on publicly-funded R&D was €290million; in 2010 it was €872 million.

Making the announcement today at NovaUCD, the UCD Innovation and Technology Transfer Office, Minister Bruton said:

A key part of the Government’s plan for jobs and growth is ensuring that we create more products, services and ultimately jobs from Ireland’s top quality scientific research system.

Today’s announcement marks a major evolution of the relationship between industry and publicly-funded research. It will create a world-class new system that will make it easier and faster for entrepreneurs and companies to negotiate a commercial arrangement with researchers.

Minister Sherlock said:

A Central Technology Transfer Office (CTTO) will be established to act as a ‘one stop shop’ for industry engagement with the research system to find all research opportunities and IP that has been generated across the entire publicly funded research system. The policies set out in the IP Protocol will also support the building of relationships with industry that will support a sustainable flow of commercialisation activities and build networks of long-term knowledge sharing.