Professor Mark Ferguson:

I thank the Acting Chair and the members of the committee for the invitation to be here. I have produced a written statement so I propose to give only a short summary to leave the maximum amount of time for questions.

Since I last appeared before this committee, Science Foundation Ireland has put in place a number of administrative arrangements between the UK and Ireland to foster bilateral collaboration between the two countries. Those arrangements are detailed in my statement and I will not go through them here, but in summary, all of the arrangements are in place. We have made investments to stimulate those and what will be required is further funding to take forward those bilateral relationships.

There are few opportunities emerging from Brexit but one of them is the opportunity to recruit outstanding people. We have already been successful in doing that. Recruiting outstanding researchers is very important, not just for the academic sector but for the economy. They are stars and attract companies, allow for collaboration with companies and build excellence. I particularly single out the recruitment of Professor Seamus Davis, who is a joint appointment between the University of Oxford and University College Cork. That is an opportunity to recruit someone of an outstanding calibre.

There will be further such opportunities and it is important that we take advantage of them because most of Brexit is about mitigating damage and there are relatively few areas in which we may gain some advantage. Bilateral collaboration is important.

I would especially like to single out the necessity of doing things with Northern Ireland. There are no North-South collaborative research programmes. There were previously, but they fell apart when the Northern Ireland Executive did because they were not a line item in the Northern Ireland budget and therefore the civil servants could not allocate the UK money. We have submitted proposals to strengthen North-South research collaboration through centres. Those submissions are with the Irish and UK Governments and that is an important area for us to look at post Brexit.

My statement gives the committee the up-to-date data on the European programmes within Horizon 2020. The high-level summary is that Ireland is on track to draw down more funding than we put in for the first time. While that is good, approximately 10% of our collaborations are with the UK. Should the UK crash out of the European Union without a deal regarding research collaboration, it will not be eligible for those programmes and we will have to look therefore at bilateral ways of collaborating with the UK. The administrative arrangements are in there but the budget is not because, of course, they are currently paid for out of the EU budget and, in the future, after Brexit, they would have to be paid for by Ireland and the UK separately. That is another important issue to be looking at.

We strongly support the proposal from the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce to establish a UK-Ireland research and innovation fund. We also hope that research and innovation will be covered in the contingency fund that was allocated in yesterday's budget. We are respectful of the fact that there are many small businesses and farms in Border regions that need to be protected but there are some things in the research and innovation space that also require attention. One or two of those, as I have outlined, are opportunities.

I will stop there and leave the maximum amount of time for questions.