The fact that the research and development tax credit was raised from 30 per cent to 35 per cent in the recent budget was good news. That it was the second such increase in two years (from 25 per cent), shows just how important R&D is to Ireland Inc.
Collaboration between industry and academia is at the heart of this.
“Industry-academic collaboration is a cornerstone of Ireland’s R&D ecosystem. It enables the exchange of knowledge, accelerates innovation and ensures that research outputs are aligned with real-world industrial needs,” says Matt Seward, executive director, technical services and manufacturing science, at Lilly Limerick, part of pharmaceutical group Eli Lilly.
“At Eli Lilly and Co, we view these partnerships not just as strategic alliances but as essential mechanisms for sustaining scientific excellence and operational competitiveness.”
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Ireland’s strong academic institutions and government-supported research centres, such as SSPC (the Research Ireland Centre for Pharmaceuticals), and PMTC [Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Technology Centre], enable the productive partnerships needed to remain competitive in the pharmaceutical sector.
“We partner with academic research centres throughout Ireland to sponsor postdoctoral and graduate student research projects at, and in collaboration with, our Kinsale and Limerick manufacturing sites,” explains Seward.
“These strategic partnerships create mutually beneficial opportunities for investigators and students and give our scientists access to the combined depth and expertise of Ireland’s academic research apparatus. The ability to bring an academic perspective to some of our more challenging research and manufacturing processes has resulted in implementation of process optimisations and the ability to introduce new, novel technologies into our processes.”
Lilly partners with the University of Limerick to develop its novel immersive biology (iBio) curriculum programme. “This experiential Bachelor/Master of Science in Immersive Bioscience and Biotherapeutics cultivates future leaders in pharma through hands-on training and critical thinking,” says Seward.
“We provide both financial backing and technical expertise for curriculum development. The quality of graduates we recruit from local universities is already exceptional. However, opportunities like this enable us to further strengthen our strategic position both in Ireland and globally.”
The company also actively partners with universities across the country to provide work placements for third-level students, and provides guest lecturers in its areas of expertise too.
“The presence of structured partnerships between industry and academia – supported by organisations like IDA Ireland, American Chamber of Commerce, and Ibec – signals beyond our borders that Ireland is committed to actively fostering innovation and to sustaining these successes. These collaborations create an ecosystem in which companies can tap into cutting-edge research, skilled talent, and a culture of knowledge exchange.”
But there is no room for complacency. “While Ireland has made and continues to make commendable strides, staying at the cutting edge of technology requires constant vigilance,” says Seward.
Continued investment in university infrastructure, equipment, and talent is required to maintain these strengths.
“Sustained and unwavering investment in this space will remain critical to our ability to drive technology and industrial investments that have been hallmarks of Ireland’s success.
“The quality of our graduates is amongst the top in the world, but that is not something that will necessarily persist in perpetuity. It is all of our responsibility to ensure our academic standards remain commensurate with our expectations for sustained success to ensure our academic institutes, R&D and manufacturing facilities remain at the forefront of excellence.”
Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for Ireland’s continued leadership in research and innovation, in Seward’s view. “Nowhere is this more evident than in the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning across all facets of R&D and manufacturing.”
“These technologies are fundamentally reshaping how we approach modelling, predictive analytics, and decision making in our industry. It is critical that academia continue to develop expertise in these spaces to produce graduates with the skills to bridge traditional science and engineering with data science.”
Collaborating in course design, to produce the talent that companies will need into the future, will be increasingly important.
“Technology is moving rapidly, and companies’ future strategies are pivoting as quickly. The most successful FDI companies in Ireland have built strong and lasting relationships with our universities where they constantly provide feedback on course content and lend industry experts to ensure our universities are producing market ready talent,” says Cathal Noone, partner, tax and legal, and R&D leader at Deloitte.
“Some companies are hiring the entire graduating classes from some of the courses they collaborate on. Having the wealth of global leading companies in Ireland means that our graduates are coming out market ready and future proofed in a way that would not be possible without these industry partnerships.”
Some easy steps could help foster more collaboration.
“A very simple solution change would be to remove the restrictions in the R&D tax credit limiting the amount of university costs you can include in your claim to 15 per cent of the internal spend,” suggests Noone.
“The opposite should be true – an enhanced rate could be introduced to encourage academic collaboration. Companies should be given the option to outsource their basic and applied research requirements to universities and claim R&D incentives for that expenditure even if their internal spends are minimal.”
Another issue arises frequently in contract arrangements, around who owns the IP and what publication rights exist on the academic side, Noone adds. “If more collaborative research is to happen, we need to build a better infrastructure for the creation of consortia and an acceptance that the financer of the research is the IP holder and can dictate terms.”
