Dr. Ciarán Seoighe:

The Senator said that women need a hand up instead of a handout. In terms of correcting gender imbalance, small simple things done in the right way can have a large impact and we have seen that in some of our calls, for example, reviewers being given bias training. It is about experts looking at the language in the call that might be inadvertently putting people off the call and preventing applications. There are other aspects where, with all things being equal, we then advantage the women first and put them at the top of the list. The merit is still exactly the same but with ceteris paribusor all else being equal, we have seen a doubling in the impact over the past couple of years. We experiment with things and employ strategies to improve the situation. Some work and some do not but the ones that work sometimes can have a really big impact for small changes.

Future-proofing is very much about recognising talent and having the right talent in the right place at the right time. That is really what this is going to be about.