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

Very good. I thank all our guests for their submissions, but I single out Ms Dolan's submission for the detailed way it goes through the different heads providing amendments. It gives me something concrete to respond to in my own head. I found it very helpful.

General themes are coming across from today's session and from what I am receiving in my inbox, as I imagine other members are too. These include the funding of the research being brought into line with international comparisons, the membership of the board and definitions around research. On the latter, we want to build legislation that will last, so we need to be tightening the definitions. The issue around parity of esteem seems to be fundamental. It is not just parity of esteem with respect to fundamental research versus applied research, but also the importance of the humanities versus STEM. It can easily get lost, especially in the case of blue skies research we have not figured out an application for. Such research is very often the important work. We were very glad somebody had developed mRNA technology a couple of years ago and it had been sitting on the shelf for a while ready for us to find a suitable outlet.

I wish to home in on the principle of academic freedom. As I read the general scheme, I have a nagging concern about the powers afforded to the Minister.

I am not sure that the balance is correctly struck. That has nothing at all to do with the present-day Minister but we should not make bad legislation in good times. At present we have a new stand-alone Department that is focused on further and higher education, which has never previously been the case. Normally we have the Department of Education as a whole, which is very large when it is all of education contained within one Department. I just have a nagging worry about what would happen if the legislation overpowers the role of the Minister and if at some future point, the higher education role gets folded back into the portfolio of a general education Minister. It might not even be due to ill-will of a Minister but lack of attention or lack of available time because the primary and secondary school sectors will always be demanding. I wanted to give our guests an opportunity to speak a little bit about how they see that balance being struck in the Bill. I worry about having a set of parameters that focus towards applied research. Politicians have short time horizons. We look to the next election. That may not be the appropriate time horizon when we are making decisions with regard to research. I would appreciate if our witnesses would speak about that facet of the Bill.