Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I will just ask a couple of other questions before we conclude. Again, I thank the witnesses for their submissions. Dr. Lillis spoke very well about the early researcher. I worked with a number of them in the research office in Galway, for example. It is very important that we have those funding programmes to provide support. The IRC was very good in this area with the Government of Ireland scholarships, etc. The IRC laureates are another example. There is the starting investigator research grant, SIRG,although it has all changed. These programmes changed to mirror and reflect the needs. Like everything, what is very good about Ireland is that we are agile, flexible and able to respond quickly. That is what this agency needs to be able to do as well. Where a need is identified, we must be able to come back in and develop those funding programmes to support that. I very much support the piece about the early researcher and how we support them to transition to different stages. Not all researchers and academics will potentially become innovators. They will be key eyes for their research teams, postdocs and the PhDs. There may be a PhD or a postdoc across multidisciplinary teams and we would love to see that. We want to see multi-disciplinary teams working across our universities, TUs and our third level structure. That is very important.

I thank the HEA for highlighting Impact 2030: Ireland's Research and Innovation Strategy.

These are all very important and are all the bases for us to develop our policies going forward. Research integrity, open research and the parity was referenced.

I thank Professor Carey for highlighting the importance of our history. For me, it is history and the arts, humanities and social sciences, AHSS, and across those areas. I agree with Professor Nolan that we need more funding in research. I know this is the core of what we need to do per capitaand as a country we need to see the importance of funding research and innovation at third level. Professor Nolan spoke about many different things in his opening statement.

The areas I want to ask Dr. Lillis about are around the new Government science adviser. That was previously the director general of Science Foundation Ireland and previous to that it was a stand-alone role. Will Dr. Lillis give some more detail on the new Government science adviser role? On the national science advice forum, who is it advising and is it going to be international? Will there be a mix of that? I have another question around innovation.