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

A number of us in this House were lucky enough to attend a Literary and Historical Society debate in UCD. I will not talk about the result because I was robbed, but that is for somebody else to make a determination on. As I was leaving, a PhD student came up to Deputy Ó Ríordáin and I and spoke about the pressure they were under from a financial point of view. They said that the stipend they get does not cut the mustard and that they believe it is an issue that needs to be highlighted, so this is my attempt to do that.

We all understand the necessity of putting the resources and funding into research. There has to be an element of us recognising that this might not necessarily be the research that will pay off. To a degree, people are speaking about moonshot science, but we never know what will actually pay off in research. We all know that if we do not put any resources in place and if we do not put any capacity in place within our universities for the people we want to do this research, then we will never deliver any bang for our buck in the long term. As a result, this is something we have to address. There is a wider issue in respect of third level funding in general. We all know the difficulties that students are facing, because they or their families have to pay astronomical costs to send the kids to college. We have to be able to remove fees at this point in time.

Beyond that, there is a wider issue, because many people are well removed from third level education. We have not done adequate work at an early stage in communities and with families so that we can bridge that gap. Unfortunately, that is a gap that is created by poverty and it is therefore a necessity. We need to make sure that enough people coming through, whether that is in the area of teaching in the STEM subjects or in operating in the necessary industries. We need to make sure that workforce planning has been done in that regard.

It would be remiss of me not to mention - and it would be the first time if I did not - the necessity of doing whatever can be done in the context of Dundalk Institute of Technology, DkIT eventually becoming part of the technological university group. That work needs to be done and we are now in a different set of circumstances as regards leadership in DkIT, which will probably be transitioning again to a new president. We will all have an opportunity, and we need to make sure that it happens, because we all understand that the technological university system is the only show in town.

Science Week is a fabulous idea. It is worthwhile that we are speaking about it here, although we may be bluffing. However, me bluffing about science is nothing new. I have said before that I am probably the worst computer programmer in Leinster House. I could probably go wider than that and say throughout the State.

See this speech in context