Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair very much for facilitating me. I thank all the witnesses very much for their opening statements. It is fair to say that everybody is on board with this approach. That is true across the board from the academics to whom I have spoken as well, even though there are some concerns with some of the drafting. At this point now it is about building confidence that it will work. We need to look at what recommendations we can put forward that will ensure that confidence is there from the very start in getting that right.

As a Green Party Senator, I want to see more long-term thinking because as we have seen over the last couple of years, we do not know what research is going to actually pay dividends in terms of a social and economic dividend in the future in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time. That is why, and I know that people will sometimes criticise using those two terms around functional and - someone might help me out here now-----