Professor Michael Morris:

Unfortunately, there is very little detail. It states it will be modelled on some of the academies and what are also called flagship projects within Europe. The flagship projects would, for instance, maybe take one of these technologies and put a huge amount of money into the research and development fund for people to apply to. That is a reasonable way to really focus European research funding through industry and right back to universities to do that. That flagship concept is well formulated. The academies appear to work by creating standards and targets for the educational process and what should be taught. It states that within the eight areas identified as key, it wants to produce 100,000 trained people in each sector, which is nigh on 1 million people within the next five years. It does not state how that teaching will be developed, and it does not say at what level. Is it at degree level or at training level?

There is not enough detail to understand what those academies are looking for. My guess is that it would span everything from postdoctoral fellows all the way through to technical level. There is no detail in it, so I am very worried about that and our engagement with it. We have a university system and a training system. There are huge gaps and I think in all aspects of decarbonisation and the circular economy, we do not have a trained workforce. People talk about the general public but most people within Ireland's knowledge of the circular economy is gained by reading things rather than being taught them because we do not teach it as a subject matter. There are real, serious implications for what those academies are and how they interact with our education system at all levels.