Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is scope within section 8. Section 49, which the Minister of State referenced, talks about agreements or partnerships between the agency and other bodies. I recognise that it provides that the agency may partner with a body, whether public or private, but what we were trying to get at is encouraging and supporting public-public partnerships between, for example, research or higher education institutions and other public bodies. It was not simply about the agency's own partnerships but about encouraging other partnerships. That is where it would be useful to strengthen the provisions. I accept that the Minister of State is concerned about setting out too prescriptive a list but it is important to name public-public partnerships at some point.

To pick up on what Senator Dolan said about some of the existing relationships, the Irish Research Council had a really important funding strand that specifically and explicitly related to the sustainable development goals. I am concerned about things like the really interesting work on the goals funded by the council being lost. Perhaps there could be some wording in respect of existing partnerships to ensure that existing partnerships and existing schemes such as that funding for work on the sustainable development goals are not lost.

I accept that "impartial" may be an unusual word. I am not going to press the amendment at this point but the problem is that we are coming to a tension between "independent", which is the wording used in the Bill, and what we see in section 11 whereby the agency is effectively obliged to comply with any direction from the Minister or any policy of the Government or the Minister within any time period specified by the Minister. That level of extraordinary discretionary power to give direction to an agency comes up against the independence piece. I am not going to press the amendment because I agree that "impartial" may not be the right word but we were trying to copper-fasten the provisions on independence, which are in tension with the provisions of section 11.

The Minister of State mentioned the criteria that would be considered and, in listing them, he explicitly listed parity of esteem. However, I do not believe parity of esteem is mentioned in the Bill. In our last discussion, we heard that parity of esteem was not included in the Bill. If the Minister of State is listing it as one of the criteria he expects to be reflected in the decisions made by this independent body, let us actually put it in the Bill. Simply saying that the agency is going to think about parity of esteem while not putting any obligation on it to do so does not add up.

The Minister of State made fair points on a couple of the amendments and I will withdraw some of them but I am going to come back. I ask the Minister of State to really think about how we can strengthen or make more robust the public-public partnership element. I acknowledge that there is some language in section 8 that goes part of the way but the fact that we do not have MOU structures or any of the same support infrastructure for such partnerships as we have for public private partnerships points to a gap that still exists.