Dr. Ruth Freeman:

I thank the Deputy for the question. I would characterise our approach as tipping the playing field to level it.

We know that academia has historically been a very challenging place and we see considerable deficits in the numbers of women and particularly the numbers rising into leadership and professorship roles in the STEM areas. We have taken a number of approaches that are all evidence led. The key mechanism we use to decide how funding is distributed is international peer review. We send research proposals to international scientists, engineers and specialists and they give us recommendations as to the quality of that research proposal. Evidence shows that women are judged marginally more harshly through that process. What we now do is when we look at applications and round scores, we fund the women that score equally first in an effort to redress that balance. That has been a big driver in changing the numbers of women who are receiving grants.

We also work with the institutions to encourage more women to be put forward. For a number of our programmes, particularly for early career researchers, we have quota systems. We increase the size of that quota if there is gender balance in the submissions to us. That, of course, drives behaviour to find more women and encourage them to apply. Once we do that, we do not make any other interventions during an objective review process. We run that early career call in partnership with the pathway programme of the Irish Research Council and every time we have run that call, we fund at least 50% women. We are seeing that with the right interventions, success is happening in a much more balanced way and those individuals are coming through.

There are other aspects. Appropriate supplements must be in place for researchers with caring responsibilities who take time out of their careers at any point. We have extended those supports to PhD students as well as the staff in the institutions. As Professor Nolan mentioned earlier, those objectives we have been trying to achieve through our initial gender strategy are being rolled out by means of our much more expansive EDI strategy. We recognise, for example, that very few people with significant disabilities go on to have significant research careers. The Travelling community is under-represented in research and academia. We are now trying to broaden the lens to see can we use the same methodology to help broaden the numbers coming into research. As Creating Our Future, the broad survey, shows, it is critical when we think about innovation to have a broad set of voices in the room. It is not only about EDI. It is about getting the best outcomes for Ireland and society globally for the challenges we face.