Dr. Lisa Keating:

I will follow on from what Professor Donnelly has said. I spoke about the funding streams we need for programmes and PhD students, which are needed for the attraction and retention of people. One thing we have not mentioned is infrastructure. The committee will be aware that the programme for research in third level institutions, PRTLI, ended in 2015. It invested €1.2 billion. The residual funding left on the books across our institutions is around €100 million. It has deteriorated rapidly. We have done a survey and audit of our members and more than 50% of all equipment is more than ten years old. One third of it is 15 years old. One cannot really do cutting edge research if the equipment is that old. For example, we have a piece of equipment worth €300,000 in one institution. It has been there for nearly 15 years. It has just given up. That means we have 50 different researchers whose research has stopped. One researcher is doing a piece of research that took 17 minutes. It will go back to taking five days. When talking about investment and retention of staff, we are trying to bring the best and the brightest. We are not just talking about keeping what we have, but about attracting more. They come in and see machinery and equipment that is decades old. Some of it is 30 and 40 years old. That is a real issue. On investment, it is important the new agency has sufficient investment to do all it needs to be able to do. That is competitive funding. We also need to ensure there is core funding, and the HEA provides core funding that is also attributed to research. We need to have core and competitive funding, as most other nations have, and the balance between those is key. That is where something like PRTLI or investment and research infrastructure and equipment would be key for the two agencies to work together.