Dr. Jennifer Brennan:

I will comment on cross-border research. There has been a lot of focus in previous years on larger programmes like the Horizon and INTERREG programmes. These are big research grants that run into the millions of euro.

If we want a pipeline of collaboration with Northern Ireland, we need to think about a staircase of funding opportunities from very small things like the Ulysses programme we run with France, which allows a small grant for people to visit another institution. It is about €2,500 for each participating institution. If we had something similar cross-border, it would be helpful. There are also things like the Irish Research Council's New Foundations programme, which could be used with a particular strand to look at seeding collaborations with institutions in Northern Ireland. It could include medium-sized grants that would allow two PhD students to be shared between two principal investigators, one north and one south of the Border and go right up to large-scale research centres.

I will comment on bringing talent and experienced researchers here and attracting people from the UK. Our colleagues from the IUA alluded to this. It is not just about the funding, which is challenging, but what they find when they come to Ireland. That includes the cost of accommodation, childcare, healthcare and educational and employment opportunities for their families. There is a nice programme offered by Science Foundation Ireland called the research professorship programme where a researcher can be brought in but the institution needs to be able to find the salary for this leading researcher, which can be challenging. There is a stream in the programme for joint appointments, but it requires a 50:50 split of time between the UK institution and the Irish institution, which is not easy to get somebody to agree to.

A programme is being piloted in Waterford Institute of Technology involving joint professorships with the UK with an 80:20 split. The researcher from the UK agrees to spend 20% of their time in Waterford institute and the remaining 80% in their home institution in the UK. There are plans to appoint six of these. The first was appointed a couple of weeks ago and the second is on its way. At the moment, the Science Foundation Ireland programme would not cover that, so the institute is looking to resource it itself. It is important to note the Science Foundation Ireland programme only covers science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, research, so there is a gap in the ability to attract talented researcher in arts, humanities and social sciences.