Dr. Lisa Keating:

There are a number of items here. We discussed the frontiers and the blue skies. We understand the intention but the wording in the Bill needs to be strengthened. The intention needs to be in the legislation so it is not open to debate. There is an opportunity for the agency. Hand-in-hand with that, as the Deputy referenced, is the budget. To provide some statistics for the Government's investment in research in Ireland, one can use many different metrics and argue about which metrics are the best, but whichever ones are used, we are at the bottom of the table, which is a difficulty. The total Government spend, which is how much public funding is put into research out of all public funding, is just about half of the European average. Looking at it as GDP, GNP, or GNI*, it is about half the average of what everybody else is doing. The higher education research and development, HERD, survey shows investment is at the bottom of the table. It will be impossible to realise the ambitions that we have for this new agency and research in Ireland if we do not invest.

We have not come up with a cunning plan which means that other countries can invest money but we do not need to do so to get the same returns. We need to invest if we want those returns. Those are the simple maths or economics. That is really important. Our understanding is that the new agency will bring together the budgets of SFI and the IRC, which would be great, but it is not sufficient to do all that we as a country want to do and that we know the country can do to address climate action, the housing crisis and all the key areas relating to regional development. It is so important but it will not happen in the absence of funding.

On PhD students, we have been working across our membership and engaging with the chairs of the review and the PhD students themselves. We are strongly in favour of the PhD stipend being in line with the living wage. That is really important. If PhD students, who are the backbone of research in this country, are not able to afford to live, that is a difficulty. We are not able to retain them. We do not just need this new agency to be able to fund them. Other Government Departments fund PhD students. Higher education institutes fund them. Changing the budgets just for the new agency, the SFI or the IRC will not be sufficient to be able to do that. We want equity. When we look at the statistics with regard to PhD students, we see that while we have made great progress with undergraduates from under-represented groups and those from disadvantaged areas, we have not made that progress with PhD students. Giving them a living wage is critical.

We would also like to see all the social protections available, such as maternity leave, which is a significant issue. The funding has been provided but we are unable to pay it for legislative reasons. It is important that they are able to receive maternity pay, sick pay and so on. We strongly believe that postgraduate researchers are best off having student status because it gives them an opportunity to do and to receive more, but we think they should have the protections that workers would have. We believe that is possible and it happens in many other jurisdictions. We hope for that. I think I have covered matters and hope I have left time for my colleagues.