This is a 'quick and dirty' piece of patent landscaping work we undertook during summer 2012. In the absence of any credible published analysis of the impact of Irish state science and innovation policy (which almost uniquely is academic rather than industry-led) and a practice of non-disclosure of hard fact, we decided to try and determine whether it had in fact generated commercially-relevant outputs. We'd love a commission from the Irish government to redo this piece of work thoroughly and rigorously. But we suspect this isn't imminent...