Professor Philip Nolan:

That is the interview question. We want a high functioning agency that Government and the system has confidence to invest through at a higher level. We want it to include the full range of disciplines. We want large investment in fundamental research. We want it to pursue some priority research missions with separate funding from Government. We want the committee members to be able to see the benefit of the agency in the very talented people who are going through those programmes and then going to work within our society. We want that to result in real impact on how enterprise and society function. We should also see very high levels of partnership between this new agency and the HEA, in terms of its impact on the higher education sector, and between the new agency and Enterprise Ireland and the IDA. The response to the question the Chair has asked should be about partnership and not territorial division over who does what.