James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

Gabhaim buíochas leis na Teachtaí Dála a labhair sa díospóireacht seo. It has been a worthwhile debate. I welcome the support for the motion from across the House. What is rare is wonderful. We do not see such agreement often but, when we do, it is something to celebrate. I thank the Deputies on all sides of the Chamber who contributed.

I acknowledge the contribution of the scientific community to this achievement. I visited CERN for the first time in 2018 as an Opposition spokesperson. Professor Ronan McNulty of UCD really led the charge on this for many years. He invited me along on that trip, together with Dr. Kevin Byrne and his brother Dr. Joe Byrne. Professor Sinéad Ryan, now dean of research at Trinity College, who was also there, has been an advocate in this area for a long time. There are many others, some of whom were mentioned in the course of this debate, who laboured in the vineyard for some time to make this happen. It is a cause for great celebration and acclaim for them as they see their efforts rewarded and brought to fruition.

We are able now to take the next step and avail of the opportunities this creates for the Irish academic community. There are plans to leverage our membership. A national advisory council will be set up to grow the research community and the research capacity in particle physics and the related disciplines that concern CERN. We must take full advantage of the opportunities that present. Deputy Byrne talked about a CERN strategy; the national advisory council will be in a similar vein. There may well be an industrial liaison officer as part of that exercise.

As noted in the debate, this development is about a tremendous academic collaboration but it is also an industrial, enterprise and research endeavour. There are opportunities for Irish businesses and enterprises to be part of the wider journey and, in fact, that is already happening. At the institutional level, Munster Technological University and Trinity College are both engaged in collaborations. Tyndall National Institute in Cork has a collaboration.

The fulcrum of activity at CERN is high-end research and seeking to unmask the secrets of the universe through high-end collisions and the operation of the Large Hadron Collider. However, it also offers every sort of supporting technology. When I was there, I witnessed high-performance computing, stacks of Oracle mainframes and servers and a range of data analytics. There was great engineering prowess involved in the tunnelling to create the Large Hadron Collider. There are also electrical supports, scanners and detectors. A massive engineering effort, civil, electronic and computer science engineering, goes into that. There are many opportunities, including in the trades, for Irish businesses to co-operate and contribute. I expect we will see that right across every spectrum of activity, with a huge opportunity to contribute.

Several Deputies mentioned PhD students. I am working to increase the level of support provided to researchers across the board. I draw attention to a recent letter to The Irish Times from Professor John Doyle of DCU in which he compared the situation of a student on a PhD stipend of €25,000 with that of a worker earning the same rate.

It is not like for like because PhD students have their fees paid, they do not pay any deductions, there is no PAYE or PRSI on that stipend and they may be in receipt of grant funding as well. It was well put in that letter.

Deputy Jen Cummins spoke about the importance at primary and pre-primary level. Recently I participated in the Curious Minds initiative by Research Ireland, which encourages awareness in primary schools. It was pivotal that I was able to travel to Geneva to sign the treaty. It was only possible because Deputy Gogarty allowed me to be paired for the election of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, at a time when pairs were not forthcoming from other sides of the House. I thank him for that. Deputy Gogarty made a real practical contribution that day by agreeing to pair with me so I could attend without any fear that any votes might be lost along the way. That was very important.

We are signing today as associate members. It is important to understand that this is something that has very much been the mark set in conjunction with the research community. A question was asked about why we have not taken out full membership. This is a level to which we aspire and to which we intend to grow. The research community is of a size and scale that associate membership is appropriate. This view is shared by the research community and CERN but it is a journey. As we grow our engagement, involvement and capacity, the intention is that the bandwidth will grow also. We may well aspire to full membership in due course and I will support that journey, but this is the right approach and level to enter on and it is something we do with the full support and faith of the research community. It is very much a testament to it and I thank all those who have laboured in the vineyard to make this happen. I look forward to it bearing fruit.

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