Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Science Week takes place every November. This year, it started on Sunday, 13 November, and will end next Sunday, 20 November. It is run by Science Foundation Ireland and has been running since 1995. Science Week includes a wide variety of events involving industry, colleges, schools, libraries, teachers, researchers and students throughout the State.

I say a big "Well done" to St. Patrick's Boys National School in Portarlington which today held an event to explore the world of biomedical science, including hands-on experience with the assistance of Dr. Helena Bonner.

A number of Science Week events are taking place in Kildare, mostly at Maynooth University. Tomorrow morning, the university will have an online event discussing black holes, what they are, how they formed, how our universe began and how it will end. Tomorrow evening, there will be a public conversation entitled Let's Talk About Obesity: Defeating Stigma with Science. It will discuss what science is telling us about obesity, consider whether obesity is a disease and explore how to address weight stigma in society and what treatment options are available for obesity.

On the topic of obesity, many people with long-term conditions and chronic pain have difficulty losing weight. They are often trapped in a vicious circle of pain and obesity. The Government needs to go further and ensure that treatments such as liraglutide and Ozempic are more widely available on a medical card and under the drug payment scheme.

Science Night at Maynooth University takes place this Friday from 6 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. There will be biology laboratories, chemistry talks and robots, along with computer science, physics, maths and psychology demonstrations. I commend the work of Science Foundation Ireland, a statutory body with responsibility for funding research in the areas of STEM. The foundation also promotes and supports the study of education in, and engagement with, STEM and promotes an awareness and understanding of the value of STEM to society.

We in Kildare are especially proud of Kilcullen's own Professor Teresa Lambe who has been awarded a Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish abroad. Professor Lambe and her colleagues played a major role in co-developing the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. I welcome the establishment of the Tess Lambe bursary, which will benefit female students in Cross and Passion College who go on to study a science related course at third level after completing their leaving certificate. While bursaries are fantastic, we need to do more to encourage female participation in third level education and also participation from students from less well-off areas. Third level education remains underfunded in Ireland. While third level attendance has improved, this Government provides colleges with 38% less funding per student than was provided in 2008. That has negatively impacted the quality of third level education provision and the ability of higher education institutes to produce high-quality research. In Sinn Féin's alternative budget, we provided for an increase of €93 million in recurrent funding to deliver high-quality education and research. This Government and previous ones have allowed us to fall far behind similarly sized countries when it comes to investing in research and innovation. We need a better regional balance. The institutes of technology that make up the new Atlantic Technological University have won only €1.9 million since 2014. That is just under 0.2% of Ireland's total.

As well as regional balance, we also need to provide greater funding to the public research system. Ten years of underfunding of higher education has had a severe knock-on impact on research and development. Investing in our public research system across all higher educational institutes is the best way to achieve greater levels of quality research. We in Sinn Féin believe that higher education needs a substantial increase in annual recurrent funding in order to deliver high-quality education and research. We will deliver that in government.

See this speech in context