The President of Waterford Insititute of Technology, Professor Willie Donnelly, is to appear before the Public Accounts Committee this afternoon.

The committee is to focus on the Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy’s report into the 2014 sale of Feed Henry.

The tech startup based at WIT was sold to Red Hat for 63.5 million euro.

The procedures over the handling of the sale of the spin-out company to a US multinational for had previously been criticised by the PAC, given that it yielded just over one point five million for the institute.

Committee Chairman Seán Fleming said they hope to identify what lessons can be learned about best practice in managing valuable intellectual property generated in Ireland’s third-level institutions and preventing possible conflicts of interest as academic projects become commercial commodities.