Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was very taken with hearing about the science of "Star Wars". I believe that is something that, obviously, Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, and whoever else should put huge money into because it would only be right that we be given decent working lightsabers. It would be a much better world in that case.

I would agree with much of what has been said. We have gone through a really brutal period. We have seen the absolute benefits of innovation, scientific research and real science versus some of the madness that we have seen in the past while.

I am sure many Members have had engagements with the likes of their local enterprise office, Enterprise Ireland and others and they suddenly discovered a huge number of innovative companies that are in operation, of which in some cases I must say I was unaware, and that are dealing with medical technological advances etc. These are vital pieces.

It goes without saying we need a university infrastructure. There are weaknesses in it at this point in time. I have welcomed the technological university, TU, journey for many of the institutes of technology, IoTs. The difficulty for me, and I will be revisiting this later, particularly with the Minister, is obviously TU status for Dundalk Institute of Technology. It may be a more elongated roadmap for Dundalk to get there but we all need to ensure that happens because we are talking about a major institution that does a significant amount of work and is a really great resource in the area. It would be terrible that it would lose out in funding and all the other necessary benefits from that TU status.

Much money needs to be put in to ensure that we have innovation, that we have SFI, that we have enough PhD students and that they are basically researching into everything - the stuff we have not decided. Whether that relates to climate change, technology, medicine or whatever, it does not matter.

We also have to look at the weaknesses in our education system. While there are many more roadmaps now, and I welcome the likes of apprenticeships and post-leaving certificate, PLC, courses as the way to make it to the end or, should I say, into lifelong learning, there are a huge amount of people who miss out on the basics. That is where we need a huge amount of effort to be put in to pinpoint supports for families and communities to make sure that more people are engaged in the benefits of science and the benefits of education. That is absolutely necessary.

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