Mr. Frank Jones:

It is very important to look at the future funding. If we keep going the way we are going in terms of engaging researchers on very specific-purpose, externally-funded, short- and fixed-term contracts, there will be no blue skies research. There will be no Luke O'Neills in a number of years. We will not have researchers ready to go who are properly engaged and safe and secure in their employment to conduct research in areas they find important. We will be waiting until medical companies or other funding agencies decide what is important for us to research. We need blue skies research, not just for the purpose of research but for education.

We have seen that through Covid. Every news programme over the past two years relied on the few senior researchers left who are comfortably, properly and safely employed on contracts of indefinite duration, CIDs, in both public and private universities. We have another crisis, our climate crisis, which will put Covid into the ha'penny place. We need to have our people ready for that and properly safely engaged, rather than waiting on three-year externally-funded contracts that lead to definite termination at the end of the project.