Professor Cormac Taylor:

A very significant part of academic and, if one wants to call it, translation-orientated research is very much communication and feeding the capacity for researchers across disciplines and across fundamental and applied research to get them into the same room together and to create a culture of research. That is one of the things which is very exciting about what is happening at the moment. There is no question that researchers at the coalface have felt like they are in silos and very much separated from each other according to very strict definitions of what constitutes research and applied orientated research. Even the strange phrases like "orientated basic research" started to appear.

There is a real need for clear language in the Bill. If anything else, there should be a glossary at the start which very much defines what we mean by these topics. If we can create a culture and agency which very much cultivates that culture and gets us talking to each other, that can be as simple as physically organising a forum which happens each year for the funding agency which just brings people together and gives them the opportunity to talk and meet with each other. It will also get the innovators. None of us is just a pure basic researcher who never even thought about anything in the innovation field, and I doubt if there is an innovator who never thought about research. Each of us fits into a little bit and part of that spectrum. We cannot really legislate for any one because every one of us is different and has different skills to bring to the table. I believe, however, if we get people together, there is a great opportunity for development.

We must support our young investigators. We cannot do without the PhDs and the postgraduate researchers, because it is from there the next ideas are coming from. The amount of funding they receive at the moment is very much not sustainable for a life and that is choking the lifeblood of the whole enterprise.