“Irish Universities can and must be much better at engaging with business” | University College Cork

“Irish Universities can and must be much better at engaging with business”

“Irish Universities can and must be much better at engaging with business” states Sean O’Driscoll, one of Ireland’s business leaders, and chair of the Governing Authority of University College Cork (UCC).

His remarks came yesterday evening at  a UCC Business Engagement event, attended by over 200 attendees from across Ireland’s business sector.

“From experience, unlike US universities, Irish universities do not reach out enough to business. In Ireland, businesses have to reach into universities and when they do, they find it very difficult, time consuming and frustrating to navigate their way through overly complex organisations. It should not be so” stated Sean O’Driscoll, who is also Chairman of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and former Chief Executive of Glen Dimplex.

UCC leads Ireland in industry engagement, securing over €120 million in research funding in 2023, and has the highest graduate employability rate of Irish universities. A new business engagement website, which will act as a single point of contact for SME’s and multinationals looking to engage with UCC, was launched on the night.

The business engagement event highlighted the diverse ways UCC supports industry, from research partnerships to talent and skills development to innovation and technologies. Leading industry partners, including ESB, Carbery Group, J&J MedTech, KPMG, Qualcomm, and Pfizer, shared insights into their successful collaborations with UCC, demonstrating how these partnerships are driving advancements across multiple sectors.

“We have a strong focus on industry engagement and innovation at UCC that has created a culture where industry collaboration thrives. Industry engagement is about more than economic development, it is about building stronger, more resilient communities” stated Professor John O’Halloran, President of UCC.

“UCC is an enterprise of significant scale, with an annual Budget of approximately €600 million, 25,000 students and 3,200 staff. If it were a town it would be the 6th largest in Ireland. As a large employer, UCC has a huge national and regional economic impact, proving conclusively that education, research and innovation is not a cost, it is an investment” stated Sean O’Driscoll.