Dr. Lisa Keating:

I thank the Deputy for his question. I already mentioned the ERC, which specifically funds based on research excellence. That tends to go hand-in-hand with the creation of new knowledge. There is no expectation. An interesting finding from the ERC was that it funds purely based on research excellence. It funds fundamental, early stage, curiosity driven research. It has another important aspect. It comes from the individual. I refer back to the question put to my colleague by Deputy Jim O'Callaghan. It is important that a country has priority areas but researchers with creativity also need to be able to come forward with new ideas, which we do not know we are going to use. The usual example refers to the Covid vaccine. Messenger RNA was discovered many decades ago, as everybody now knows. Nobody was interested in that creation of new knowledge at the time. That comes from individual funding. The new agency needs to have funding for individuals, as well as critical mass. It needs to have funding for fundamental, early stage, curiosity driven research and knowledge creation. The ERC is the best place to look for definitions, and we can provide that to the committee, if needed.