Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes, I have ten minutes and Deputy Ó Laoghaire has five minutes.

I would like to thank the Minister and everyone involved in making Science Week happen. It is a wonderful initiative that provides a great chance to recognise and celebrate the role of science in our everyday lives. One of the key themes of this year’s Science Week was the initiative Creating our Future being run by Science Foundation Ireland. Creating our Future will ask people and communities across Ireland to submit ideas on what researchers can do to create a better future. I obviously support that idea because reaching out to the public for sources of research topics is a good idea. I would like to lend my voice to the call to people to make submissions before the deadline at the end of November. I am glad that the highest number of applications is from Sligo at the moment. I hope that will spur Mayo on to get more applications in.

Science Week is so important, given the context of climate change. I was listening to Ulster radio few days ago and heard a woman with disabilities speaking about the importance of replacing plastics. She has to use a straw and she spoke about how important a straw is for her. In fact, her life depends on it to feed her, but a paper straw is not of any use to her. There are, therefore, a whole lot of innovations there waiting to happen. They need to be met in order for us to meet our climate change targets and the challenges around that.

One of the few positives to come out of Covid-19 is that it has catapulted scientists and scientific data onto the mainstream. Many scientists have become household names now. Scientific terms have entered everyday conversation. The media and the public have shown a fantastic aptitude for debating complex scientific concepts. The Covid-19 vaccine, and other vaccines of which the Minister spoke, such as the HPV vaccine and others, are some of the starkest examples of the value of scientific research. While we are talking about the HPV vaccine, we need to stop charging people €600 for a vaccine when their doctor recommends that they have the vaccine. We need to link everything up to make it count. We need to consider the young girls who have missed out on the vaccine, and not charge them €600 now. When a doctor insists that a person needs this HPV vaccine, and we have all the evidence, we should make it available to people and maybe bring it in under the treatment purchase fund.

The pandemic has shown the importance of a scientifically engaged public. Another dynamic is the intersection between science, research and decision-making. Science advice should have a clear and structured role in all forms of public policy creation and assessment. I welcome the re-separation of the position of chief scientific adviser to Government from the head of Science Foundation Ireland. This was announced today, and I welcome that. These roles were amalgamated during the austerity years. There is an inherent conflict of interest between these roles. More importantly, both positions are hugely important and justify a stand-alone position. This is a positive step, but far more needs to be done to provide a real structure for this type of engagement.

At a European level, there are structures that facilitate engagement between researchers and policymakers, such as the European Commission's scientific advice mechanism. However, in Ireland, we do not have a strong link between public policy and academic research. It needs to be improved. We need to implement a structured, systematic approach. Ireland is also unusual in having no layer of public research institutes between institutes of higher education and Government. As a result, higher education performs the function of Ireland's de facto public research system. Higher education does this well. However, it is a role that needs to be recognised in value, if we want to deliver the public policy outcomes we all want to see, whether these are in climate change, health, agriculture, food security or in any other area.

Core funding for higher education forms the bedrock of our public research system, as the Minister knows. The success of other research funding agencies, such as Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board, HRB, and the Irish Research Council, IRC, depend on leveraging higher education to achieve specific objectives. The funding of our higher education is the foundation of all public research investment in the State. However, the best way to celebrate Science Week is to move higher education out of the austerity mode. This is essential if we want to ramp up and rebalance research and development, and if we want to deliver an all-Ireland research ecosystem, to produce better social and economic outcomes.

Successive Fine Gael Governments have spent less on research and development as a percentage of GDP, GNI, and even modified GNI every year since 2011, and less as a share of public expenditure every year since 2012. We need to look at that and to be upfront about it. We need to put the funding where it needs to be. This leaves us far below the EU average and the Government's own targets, set as part of the innovation strategy 2020. An increase in publicly funded research is essential to tackle the many social and economic challenges we face to produce a sustainable economy. Public funding should be open access, OA, and available to all academics and the wider public to ensure the greatest level of collaboration. Economic reports show that for every €1 invested in research and development more than €5 is returned to the economy. Public investment in research also leverages higher levels of industry investment, and leads to accessing more competitive research support through international funds, such as Horizon Europe. It is vital, therefore, that we engage internationally.

Sinn Féin has repeatedly called on the Government to become an associated member of European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, which is most famous for its Large Hadron Collider. We should have access to and be involved in this amazing project. We also need to establish a national forum on research infrastructure needs on an all-island basis. I know the Minister and I share that vision. I will certainly work with him and others to make that happen. It was recently said to me by the provost of Trinity College Dublin, Professor Linda Doyle, that the State needs to fund the hardest things to fund.

We need to look at that. When it comes to research, once the infrastructure is provided, our brilliant researchers can do the rest. We need to provide that infrastructure. I would like to have a separate conversation with the Minister about that, whether that is a systematic web archive, a publicly owned genomic database or material characterisation infrastructure. We need to ensure that we are ambitious about the needs of the public research sector. We need to value the research and all of the researchers, including PhD students. PhD students, researchers and workers should be recognised for the valuable work that they do. We need to increase investment in public research and we need to make sure that includes improving the working conditions of all researchers. We need to balance public research funding between applied and foundational research, between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM, and the social sciences, and just as importantly between the regions. Higher education research has consistently broken down as roughly 88% for universities and 12% for the technological higher education sector. The uneven spread of public research investment flows through enterprise research and development activity. The eastern and midlands region saw 67% of business expenditure on research and development while the south got 21% and the north and west only accounted for 12%. There are regional disparities that we need to address. There are opportunities to do that with the technological universities. The eastern and midland accounted for 60% of research personnel compared with 24% in the south and just 15% in the north and west. We need to address that.

I am glad the Minister agrees with me about partition. It is a persistent factor whenever we talk about development for the north west. We need to break down partition. It has been a disaster for both states on this island. It continues to severely impact it. We can break down many barriers for higher education, innovation and science, not just for the immediate work and the innovations, but to create an understanding among all communities across the island so that we have a positive externality as well as us all caring together about the island that we live on and fulfilling its potential. It serves all communities, regions and people.

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