Professor Jim Livesey:

I have the data in my head, so I will answer that and the others can address the other issues. For every €1 put into the public research system, €4 is put into the private system. Everyone is aware of the numbers but I will repeat them. We have 0.9% of GNI* in research and development. The target for the past 25 years has been 2.5%. We are nowhere near that. The key thing to keep separate is that for every €1 we put into competitive funding competitions, no matter where it is going, another €1 has to be put into the core. We do not fund at full economic cost. If we spend €1 on a postdoc, when we count up what it costs to support that it costs another €1. At the moment, universities are having to cross-subsidise all of our wonderful competitive awards, to the point where we will literally run out of capacity. A colleague of mine turned down a €6 million award because their department could not sustain it. This is happening all over the system.

There is another point about competition. We have to remember the universities are one of the few domestic entities that are internationally competitive. Every one of us here came back. We would not have come back to a system in which we could not work to our maximum potential.