Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Its not easy to answer and I can only focus on what Ireland is doing. Ireland has taken a long term view. We are working proactively on the stem side and education. The latter is the key in South Korea and its population seems to be natural innovators. At present we are doing a lot of work on, for instance, funding out-of-field mathematics teachers. We are spending a considerable amount of taxpayers money in bringing the out-of-field maths teachers and upskilling them with a professional diploma in order to allow them to teach the curriculum and so on. We are now talking about funding continual professional development at primary school level in order to equip teachers to teach mathematics. Sometimes a deficit exists. Sometimes there is a competition in primary schools between other subjects and mathematics and science related topics.

There are outreach projects such as the Discover Science and Engineering programme, industry engagement and Coder Dojo and whatnot. We must start thinking long term. We must analyse how we train teachers to teach these subjects and find out whether there is more to be done in order to begin challenging other regions like Singapore and South Korea. There is a consciousness around that goal.

In the short term, Ireland is not in a position to fund the whole gamut of research. We must be smart, specialise in certain areas and ensure that we do not leave basic research out of the loop. We must ensure that there is blue sky research and find pockets of funding to invest in astrophysics, etc. I am not saying that we are putting all of our eggs into the 14 research priority areas because one must include the humanities, social sciences, digital humanities and so on. We must ensure that the research infrastructure is more rounded. In order for us to compete with regions like Singapore in the long term then the key is to equip the teachers of science and mathematics in a certain way. The output is students who are driven. Naturally those students would then go into post-primary education and then on to courses at tertiary level where there is more a take up of those science related and STEM related subjects.