Dr. Lisa Keating:

I thank the Deputy for the question. It is a really important area and there is a lot of interest in this. The agency gives the opportunity for there to be, as the intention is, parity of esteem but it is in how the Bill is enacted and how the agency operationalises.

With regard to the funding, The Irish Research Council, IRC, funds across all disciplines and, therefore, arts, humanities and social sciences, AHSS, and STEM, and Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, funds then with regard to specific priority areas under STEM under its legislation. Bringing it together, there should be the opportunity to fund across all disciplines.

Specifically with regard to making sure that there is a balance between those, one aspect is the budget which is really important - a larger budget all round but also making sure that there is a sufficient budget in the arts, humanities and social sciences - but there is a lot more to it than that. A lot of it is with regard to the programme design, the language that is used and the expectation. For example, if the expectation on a funding programme is for there to be spin-out companies, there might be more difficulty for arts, humanities and social science, not to say that there is not. It is the language that is used in the phrase, performance index, PI. If the programmes, for example, are large-scale, AHSS, on project size, might be quite significantly different to STEM if the bar you are expected to look for is €1 million for a project.

There are ways it can be disincentivised and there could be problems. When we look at how the agency forms and functions, that is what we are interested in. It it important that the Bill deals with the full range of disciplines across arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM. It is the way that they are nourished and nurtured-----