Inaugural Research & Innovation Conference
Irelands, inaugural Research & Innovation Conference in association with ‘Big Four’ firm EY and chaired by Denis Hayes, Managing Director of the Irish Research & Development Group, will be held at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday 24th of February. Aimed at positioning Ireland as a Global Innovation Hub by 2020, the conference will attract speakers from some of Ireland’s leading multinationals, universities and government agencies responsible for targeting over €1.25 billion of R&D funding under Horizon 2020.
Minister of State for Skills, Research & Innovation, Damien English, TD will also address almost 400 C-Suite decision makers spanning across sectors from, Agri-Food, LifeSciences, ICT, Engineering, Financial Services, Gaming and Social Media. In budget 2015, government announced its intention to introduce a ‘best in class’ Knowledge Development Box – this along with enhancements to Ireland’s IP regime will ensure the tax environment is optimised for innovative enterprises located here. This reform will include 130 commercially relevant technologies transferred to enterprise and 35 new spinout companies.
Minister of State, Damien English, TD, commented:
Research and Development (‘R&D’) investment by companies is more than double the world average and the Government plans to make Ireland a European leader for intellectual property activity by business – including doubling by 2018 the number of patents, industrial designs registered and other measureable IP activities by businesses in Ireland.
Ian Collins, Head of R&D for EY Ireland commented: “The R&D tax credit scheme has become a key part of Ireland’s corporate tax incentive package in attracting R&D investment to Ireland and retaining that investment. Given the success of the regime and the significant increase in the number of companies asking Irish Revenue for cash refunds for their R&D activity, it should come as no surprise that the level of audit scrutiny by Revenue is on the rise. Revenue have released new guidelines which include a number of areas where they seem to be clamping down on. More and more audits are yielding settlements for Revenue and therefore it is crucial for companies to understand what Revenue’s latest areas of focus are”.
The outstanding success of Irelands approach to open innovation is demonstrated by the fact that more research is commercialised in Ireland per million € invested than most other European countries. Ireland’s thriving R&D sector is driven by collaborations between industry, academia and government agencies – all focused on maximising industry competitiveness. Throughout the conference almost 25 supplier companies of technology, equipment and services will address the delegates with a 60 second elevator pitch to win new business and generate business leads.
