Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their contributions, as well as their statements, which I read with interest. Many of the concerns are well-founded. Pre-legislative scrutiny is a great opportunity to have our recommendations put before the Minister and for the Department to come back to tell us how it is addressing them.

Reference was made to governance. It is absolutely worthwhile having different forms of academia as part of the governance structure. I come from a humanities background and very much know the importance of research that is curiosity-based or blue-sky thinking. We need to guard against short-termism, particularly when it comes to research. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we do not know what is coming down the road. That is why research needs to be independent. That is not to say I am not a fan of applied research but there has been a mismatch. Even if one considers the funding from the Irish Research Council compared with that from SFI, there is a mismatch. This is an opportunity to advance this. People have asked me for examples of things that are really important about research, not just in humanities but more so curiosity-based research. Obviously, there is some such research in science but humanities has a part to play in answering some of the questions relating to diversity and social cohesion, as well as learning lessons from our past. Yesterday, I spoke to Dr. Marie-Louise Coolahan, who is doing research that involves looking back at where women's voices were in English literature in Ireland a few centuries ago. That informs their place in society, as well as the place of diversity and different ethnicities. It would be great if the witnesses could think of examples in that regard. We absolutely need to address the issue of parity of esteem. There has been concern that it was addressed in an earlier draft but the Bill no longer has that kind of definition.

On the models of research, there is concern that project teams for applied research are very different from those for fundamental research. If it is the case that, as part of this research body, we are saying these are the types of project teams we need to have, that holds that research in a different space from where it is currently and gets away from the curiosity that allows us to say what independent researchers require from the team around them.