Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, I am very uneasy about this legislation. We are proposing to consolidate the two agencies here before conducting the evaluation that I understand the Minister of State is planning, if it is not already under way. To have structural reform before doing the research into evaluating how the present system is working seems the wrong way to do things.

It said in the blurb that it is driven by the challenge of climate and digital transformation in the document Impact 2030 but if that is the case, why not involve Teagasc, the Marine Institute, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, the EPA and so on? These are the key researchers in those fields of how we are going to drive change. It is not a convincing argument. I struggle to see the rationale. Impact 2030 refers to interdisciplinary endeavour, and that is certainly possible but two agencies do not need to be merged to get that. It does seem that a new Department wants to consolidate for the sake of consolidating. I do not really believe that is wise. One of Ireland’s strengths has been as an innovator as opposed to doing a lot of fundamental research. That is a strength that we should nurture.

Even though Impact 2030 states that helping enterprise, particularly SMEs, start, succeed and transform through innovation is a key objective, this has not been reproduced in either sections 8 or 9 of the legislation, so those are not objectives set out. The only mention of the enterprise agencies is to consult with them, but not work with them which is a very different matter. We have had very close involvement of the enterprise agencies with SFI historically. When it comes to evaluating research proposals, SFI had a tried and tested way where impact on enterprise was a key part of that. The number of partners that were involved in a research project, the money leveraged from the private sector, the spinout of new companies, the placement of people in companies afterwards were key elements of deciding what was valuable research. None of that is mentioned in the Bill. Only one out of the 12 members of the board need to have experience in enterprise or expertise in enterprise. We are not taking the correct approach of valuing what has been so important to our research and what SFI nurtured. Sometimes by joining things together we get less than the sum of the parts and I worry that is the case here.

I welcome funding partnership but no policies or principles have been set out in the section as to the nature of these funding partnerships. That could be a valuable way of doing the approach that we have had.

Finally, there is a tendency in the higher education world to see getting bigger research budgets as a mark of status but that does not necessarily mean that they are contributing to the advancement either of the economy or society. There needs to be a very strong enterprise element in the make-up of this board so that it is ensured that the Government delivers the sort of relevance that is so important in a small country like ours, a small trading economy that has to be nimble and quick to adapt and adopt innovation.

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