Professor Philip Nolan:

I will be brief. Dr. Freeman may also wish to comment. SFI is a State agency founded 20 years ago under the Industrial Development (Science Foundation Ireland) Act 2003. It is funded through the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, which is led by the Minister, Deputy Harris. The budget for SFI is approximately €230 million per year investment in research across the system. As regards the surplus in the national training fund, we believe approximately 4%, or €40 million, of the annual income to the fund should be invested in doctoral research. A significant amount of the surplus could be invested in doctoral students and research infrastructure, which was mentioned earlier.

A significant amount of our current research effort focuses on questions that are likely to be of benefit to society and the economy. Our researchers are heavily directed towards the twin digital and green transitions and the interaction between them, whereby the digital transition has to be green and vice versa. There is a very large research effort behind climate and biodiversity. At the top end, we have a call open at the moment for an all-island research centre in climate and biodiversity. Bids in that regard have been received. That will be a major investment through the next eight years in that space. The national challenge fund is run by Dr. Freeman but I can talk about it. It is a €69 million challenge fund under the European recovery and resilience facility looking at green and digital transitions.

There is a huge emphasis on climate, biodiversity, water and many other things right across our portfolio. Dr. Freeman will expand on that a little.