Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The first question is slightly philosophical in terms of how we are spending our money. The stated goal of the innovation programme, programme B, worth €356 million, is to foster and embed a world-class innovation system that underpins enterprise development and drives commercialisation of research. Enterprise development and the driving of the commercialisation of research are stated aims. In the document supplied by the Department on Vote 32, the opening sentence on programme B says that research development and innovation investment is all about delivering tangible economic impacts from our investment in science and research. If we then look at the performance indicators against which this is measured, the metrics include the number of companies involved in technology centres, the number of high potential start-up companies supported, number of commercially valuable technologies transferred, the number of company collaborations, the number of commercial company collaborations with Science Foundation Ireland at third level, the cumulative funding leveraged from non-Exchequer sources, and licence agreements.

The stated goal, the introduction from the Department and the performance indicators are all about commercialisation. It says the State's investment in science and research is all about commercialisation. What about society? Society is an important element. Science and technology should be doing a great deal for society and community. This is not an abstract question. It goes right to the heart of how we are spending our money.

I was approached a while back by some very capable scientists, molecular biologists, who were saying that, since 2012, they have been pushed up the technology readiness levels from basic scientific research into commercialisation. Essentially what they are saying is that there is a great deal of important scientific work going on in Ireland that scientists are involved in, some of which translated into economic gain and some into societal gain, but that during the past seven years they have been pushed out of basic scientific research and they have found that money has only been available for collaborating with big pharma on clinical trials. If one looks at the money that is available in the universities for projects, one of the stipulations is that a company must be involved.

I put it to the Minister of State that there should be mention of society and the public good. We cannot just be talking about the economy. Obviously, the economy is important and we need a return on investment, but there can be a major social return on our investment. Let us say, for example that some of our scientists wanted to get involved in heritage work or other projects that benefit society. There is a great deal of interaction between societal good and science and technology, but if everything we say in how we spend hundreds of millions of public money is jobs and business, we will miss that. We are missing it because when one talks to our scientists and asks them about the basic research in scientific areas that are just for social good, the answer is no because they cannot get the funding for it because the scientists have to find companies and some way that they can make a profit out of the research. It is not right that this is the only way. When I ask our scientists whether we have a balanced distribution along the TLR levels, with one being basic research and nine being that it is popping off the end of a factory, the answer I am getting across Ireland is no, that the money is being funded upwards. I have spoken in the past two months to eminent scientists in Ireland and have asked whether the funnel of basic scientific research that was leaving our laboratories and was then being commercialised was being cut off. I asked them whether we would start to run out of inventions, patents and the other things coming out of the laboratory, and the answer was yes, we will run out.

Why is there no mention of a potential benefit to society and the public good from our investment in science and research? Is that dealt with by another Department? Is the Minister of State satisfied that there is a fair balance across the technology readiness levels such that we are getting a throughput or is there, as I have been told by scientists, a bottleneck of a lack of investment at the basic scientific level?