Dr. Ciarán Seoighe:

I will address the question on what we are doing to assist Ukrainians and the question on the technological universities. With respect to displaced researchers from Ukraine, that is one group we are considering how we can best assist. Mr. Peter Brown from the IRC is here and we are working collaboratively with the council, colleagues from the Irish Universities Association, IUA, the Royal Irish Academy and the Health Research Board to answer that question. We are working with a group called Scholars at Risk based out of Maynooth. It understands better how we can best provide support. The point is to provide genuine supports that will be useful. The honest answer is we have a rough idea of how many people might need support and at which levels. We are not entirely clear yet how best to support these individuals but the broad plan is there would be a mentor or sponsor within our university system who would see how they could collaborate with those researchers, bring them into their laboratories and apply to the funding agencies to see if we can provide some supports. For now, we are working to see what is the best way we can provide some supports.