Professor Ronan McNulty:

On the Senator's first question on why we are not a member, I think I will just throw it back to him. I have no idea why we are not a member. It seems to me to be a no-brainer when one looks at the benefits and the fact that the money that is spent is spent on Ireland. It is not like we giving this money to Switzerland. It is for us and for our future. When we had the downturn in economies, countries that had invested more in technology did better during that downturn. We are investing in our futures. I honestly cannot answer the Senator's first question.

On the second question, we could look at the example of Israel, if one wishes. There are many similarities with Ireland in terms of the population size and the high-technology economy. However, it is quite different in terms of committing funding to research. At the moment we spend 1.2% of our GDP while Israel spends 4.2% of its GDP, which is over three times more. It has decided that is the way to improve its economy. One of the reasons was that it saw CERN as a way of using this money to benefit it. When it decided to join CERN, it wanted to join as quickly as possible and took the fastest route possible to full membership which took three years. In that period, its contract with CERN jumped from €1 million to €3 million in terms of the money its companies were getting.

I will give members some other interesting facts on Israel. One of the things in which it got very involved was trade fairs. It had a trade fair which Professor O'Shea attended in the Weizmann Institute. In turn, Israeli companies were invited to come to CERN and a synergy or environment was created where business was talking to CERN and the scientists, and facilitating a very vibrant hotbed to spearhead different projects.

Israel had one or two teachers who used to visit CERN until it became full members. In the year it became a full member, 40 teachers visited and they were being educated in the latest technology to enable them to go back and teach in the schools. It had about 20 schoolchildren going to CERN each year before it joined. Now, 200 per year are going. In the summer for undergraduates to go to CERN. Each year it has three to four students going around. Some 25% of the students who go are Palestinian. There is an example of CERN not just doing the science but also the world peace agenda. Scientists judge one based on one's science and the common goal of understanding the universe not on one's politics. Israel now has 30 PhD students working at CERN every year. That is an example of how it took that decision and ramped up as rapidly as possible.

It is a policy decision and I am not sure that is the model that Ireland wants to use. Ireland may want to go in at 10% or 20%. One might find that we fulfil our quota of contracts, so we might want to up the amount. That is fine and we will do so. One might find that we do not fulfil that quota, so we might want to lower the amount. However, one has that flexibility, so it does not hurt.