Professor Helen Kelly-Holmes:

The reason I mentioned head 8 is that some of the goals seem to me to be a little internally focused. We are here on this island but every one of us works internationally. We have to; there is no Irish researcher who just works nationally. It is impossible to do that. A lot of peer agencies, in their goals, would have a lot of ambition for the research. It reflects the reality and the potential.

My point is that maybe the Bill should not be so inward looking in its objectives.

I mentioned the sustainable development goals because we have aligned. They are a great place for interdisciplinarity and they all need interdisciplinary perspectives. They have spread through the system in teaching and learning, research, our outreach and in all our activities in the university. We have that framework now and are working towards the SDGs. I guess this is to do with the constant change in the parameters. People have pegged their activities to the SDGs so we do not always need to keep reinventing. We have a globally agreed set of goals and we can work towards those in terms of problem solving.

Professor Taylor, Professor Livesey and I also agree that research integrity, research autonomy and research ethics are crucial. We very much welcome the statement on equality, diversity and inclusion which made the absence of a statement on integrity, autonomy and ethics stand out. It is very important in the current context to have that statement in the Bill. It is taken for granted but it should not be taken for granted and probably needs to be in there. Professor Taylor may wish to comment on that.