Dr. Deirdre Lillis:

I will try to cover a few points. Much of our work in the past year involved looking at where this new agency would sit in the broader system.

The fact that, for the first time, the major competitive research funder is sitting under the same parent Department - the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science - as the university sector has given us this opportunity to look at those relationships. When we refer to other funders in the system, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science has the policy responsibility for the national research and innovation system. Under that umbrella, it is about bringing in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with Teagasc and the Marine Institute, the Sustainable Energy Authority Of Ireland, SEAI, the Health Research Board, HRB, and other funders. Part of what we are trying to achieve is cohesion across the national system so that we do not have a new agency directly competing with Teagasc. We are too small to do that, in fairness.

We have also had the opportunity to look at how this agency will work with the HEA, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. Again, while there will always be a grey area between agencies, this is to try to carve out the roles so that there will be distinctive missions. We would see this agency being concentrated primarily on research and some innovation. Then there is Enterprise Ireland for enterprise innovation and there is also the work of the public service innovation advisory board to drive innovation in the public sector. We are also trying to achieve that positioning as part of this.

To pick up on some of the other points, the reason we say "competitive" is that it distinguishes it from the core investment that goes into research through the HEA. That is just terminology. One applies for and competes for this funding as opposed to it being given as part of a block grant.