Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is hard to believe my research on medieval English has yet to find an industrial application, but there you go. Senator Flynn left a number of questions. She has been called away unavoidably. With the permission of the witnesses, I will put her questions to them on her behalf. The Senator has asked whether this Bill commits to allocating funding for frontier research and to increasing public funding for research and development through the agency, in line with European standards.

She has asked whether this Bill commits to doing anything to tackle the casualisation of researchers, the lack of liveable stipends and the lack of worker rights for PhDs to support research. She has further asked whether we can ensure that not only profitable, entrepreneurial and marketable research gets funded, but also blue skies research. She has asked why the board of the new agency is not required to include researchers in the scheme. Finally, she said the scheme is quite corporate in many of its functions and asked how the scheme appropriately balances the need for economic development and the idea of research for research's sake.