Professor Philip Nolan:

To help a little, we could make it clear that the role of the Minister revolves around matters of strategy and policy. It would be absolutely reasonable for the Minister to say "We think the balance should look like this". I am sure that this would be debated in the Dáil and be publicly accountable in the same way. The Minister has a role in the context of strategy and policy. I agree that we should probably leave aside these distinctions between fundamental and applied research, because it is often the case that they are not useful and do not apply. We need to be able to do both, and we need to be able to do both driven by the kind of desire of people within the system to find out new things and to apply them.

The Senator is absolutely right that it is very hard to know what the value of a research project done today is going to be. Only time will tell. There is an issue regarding paragraphs (a) and (f) of head 8. They have two different purposes. The first is to say that the State wants to invest in research broadly across all disciplines, career stages and the spectrum, from what one might call fundamental to applied. Paragraph (f) would also allow the State to say that it has missions or priorities, be it in the areas of renewable energy or cell and gene therapy, and that it is going to invest specifically in those because they are strategically important, not taking away from the forum but adding to it. Clarification is needed there. Most of the time we should be talking about research in its full spectrum