Professor Daniel Carey:

The peer review network, which is created by funding agencies, is a tremendous international set of connections that is often overlooked. However, the way in which people become aware of Irish research is by having it evaluated independently and through these groups. If I could put it this way, our overall objective is to make Ireland a destination of choice. I still think we have work to do. We want to make it the top choice that people have. I think there is still more to do in terms of funding and having research programmes that are tremendously attractive.

The councils are advisory in nature. My suggestion is that there could be a council for bottom-up research and one for innovation. Perhaps that is a way of getting that balance. Then we could have plenty of people on the industry side. In addition, it would not antagonise anyone who feels we are losing research, while also having the bottom-up focus.