Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I expect to receive the report in and around April. When it will be published will depend on how long it takes me to consider it and bring it to the Government and I want to publish it. My intention is to receive the report in due time to be able to consider it, bring it to Government, and then to try to start making progress on its recommendations in the Estimates process. We did make some progress in the last Estimates, but not nearly enough, in terms of increasing the stipends for Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, and Irish Research Council, IRC. One of the complexities, as I said earlier, is that there are around 10,000 annual doctoral enrolments in Ireland. Approximately 3,000 of those are funded through SFI. IRC gets a stipend of €18,500 that is now being increased to €19,000. There are approximately 2,000 doctoral enrolments funded directly by the higher education institutions. They receive different ranges of stipends. There are approximately 4,000 categorised as self-funding, that could be funded through industry, and around 1,000 from other various sources outside of my Department such as the Health Research Board, European programmes, and Teagasc. One of the things that would be really interesting for the review to do would be to look at the lack of consistency and equity and to give recommendations in that regard.

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