Mr. Frank Jones:

As it stands right now, academic freedom is not something that is enjoyed to the degree it should be by researchers who are chasing funding to ensure their employment for the next two and a half years. The pot of funding they are aiming for can be very precise, the projects can be out there and they gear themselves towards them. There can be expectations about what the deliveries will be at the end of a project, too. I do not believe that academic freedom is enjoyed by anybody running on successive fixed-term contracts. I do not believe it is. The insecurity or precarity attached to the employment and engagement of researchers has to be removed in order that they can begin to enjoy the academic freedom that those people who developed the medicines and science behind what you referred to enjoyed. It gave them the time, facilities and resources to engage in blue-sky research without being told about a specific goal they were trying to reach. Some sort of security of employment and removal of precarity and insecurity, with the right board make-up, will lead to researchers enjoying the academic freedom that they need to enjoy if they are to deliver.