Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the House for giving me the opportunity to speak about Science Week. This week, from 10 to 17 November, Ireland will reverberate with the sights and sounds of science when Science Week 2013 takes place. There is a lot of alliteration in that sentence. Now in its seventh year, Science Week is a national initiative co-ordinated by Science Foundation Ireland's Discover programme that allows everybody to embrace science by way of an enormous range of events taking place the length and breadth of the country. The aim of Science Week is to promote the relevance of science, engineering and technology in our everyday lives and demonstrate the importance of these disciplines to the future development of Irish society and the national economy.

The theme of Science Week 2013, Exploring the Extraordinary, provides people with the opportunity to explore what is happening behind the scenes of everyday life and to look at the extraordinary processes that make up the ordinary parts of our lives. Last year more than 200,000 people participated in hundreds of events run by schools, colleges, libraries, teachers, researchers and students throughout the country. There are more than 770 events registered on the Science Week website for this year and even more events will take place during the week. Despite the pressure on limited resources that everyone faces, Science Week keeps going from strength to strength and every year event organisers have seen a rise in attendance, year on year.

The Discover Science and Engineering, DSE, programme has been a considerable supporter of Science Week during the years. Administration of the DSE programme was taken over by Science Foundation Ireland last year and as the Discover programme, it continues to successfully develop and implement effective ways of engaging students, teachers and the public in the STEM subjects, namely, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The overall objectives are to increase the numbers of students studying the physical sciences, promote a positive attitude to careers in STEM and foster a greater understanding of science and its value to Irish society. Achieving this requires close interaction with third level institutions and intermediate audiences such as industry and the media. The programme aims to make a co-ordinated effort to increase interest in STEM and encourage young people to consider STEM areas as viable career options. Apart from a comprehensive events and activities programme, the programme's web portal features links to relevant programmes and areas.

Some examples of Discover-DSE initiatives are the Discover Primary Science and Maths website, aimed at primary school teachers and pupils; Greenwave, a mass science experiment involving primary schools on the arrival of spring in Ireland; Nanoquest, a project that uses video gaming to encourage 13 to 15 year old school students to develop an interest in nanotechnology and science generally; ESERO, under which Discover partnered with the European Space Agency to establish the European Space Education Resource Office, ESERO, a programme to inspire and engage young people in STEM subjects; ProjectBlogger, a site that allows teachers and second level students in Ireland to create blogs based on their science experiences and interests; My Science Career, a website that brings together resources for finding out more about a career in STEM and includes information on careers in a number of STEM areas, including ICT; science.ie, which provides a wide range of information on science, technology, engineering and mathematics to stimulate young people's interest in these areas; and Smart Futures, a national campaign for second level students in Ireland, highlighting career opportunities in information and communications technology, ICT, in association with the annual e-Skills Week. These are all initiatives capable of exciting, stimulating and inspiring young people, which is exactly what we need to achieve.

This is extremely important as the Government remains committed to the vision of using research and innovation to generate jobs and economic growth so that scientific innovation and new technologies will shape the future for the next generation of our students. The jobs agenda is writ large all over this Administration's programme for Government, as we seek to deliver qualified and high-quality personnel to take up jobs in both foreign direct investment enterprise and indigenous enterprise. We are also pursuing the provision of highly skilled employment by repositioning Irish enterprise higher up the value chain. The Government is working towards this vision through many complementary initiatives, one such being research prioritisation. The research prioritisation exercise identified priority areas that will build on Ireland's existing research strengths. They will also have the potential to deliver sustainable economic return through enterprise development, employment growth, job retention and tangible improvements to quality of life. The report of the research prioritisation steering group recommended 14 areas of opportunity, as well as underpinning technologies and infrastructure to support these priority areas. The areas were identified on the basis of existing strengths of the public research system, existing strengths of the enterprise base, opportunities that exist in the global marketplace and those which are most likely to deliver economic and societal impact, as well as jobs.

The report also made 13 systemic recommendations which were required to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the science, technology and innovation, STI, system to support the implementation of prioritisation. The 14 priority areas cover a diverse spectrum of activities including data analytics management, security and privacy, connected health and independent living, food for health, marine renewable energy, and smart grids and smart cities.

The Government agreed to the adoption of the research prioritisation steering group's recommendations as a whole-of-government policy goal and with regard to the future alignment of the majority of public STI investment with these 14 areas of opportunity. Following publication of the steering group's report on 1 March 2012, the prioritisation action group, PAG, was established under my chairmanship and political leadership to drive implementation of research prioritisation under the broader authority of the Cabinet committee on economic recovery and jobs. The group meets in plenary and has set an ambitious pace for implementation. It is supported by a range of working groups established to progress implementation between plenary sessions. Action plans designed to identify the actions required across research funding organisations to realign the majority of competitive public research funding around the priority areas have been developed for each priority area. Engagement with relevant stakeholders on the draft action plans took place at the end of 2012. The action plans were approved by the Government in June 2013 and published in July 2013.

To oversee their implementation in a holistic manner, each action plan has been assigned a champion who, in almost all cases, chaired the relevant working group which developed the plan. This is providing the forum to pave the way for an efficient process for the implementation of the plans. At the first meeting of champions, it was agreed the plans should remain live and evolve over time to ensure they can respond to real-time market developments and opportunities. The PAG will oversee implementation of the plans.

Moreover, a detailed framework of metrics and targets has been drawn up as part of research prioritisation to measure the outputs and impact of funding provided, which will comprehend all of the 14 action plans for the respective priority areas. This too was approved by the Government in June 2013.

There will also be ongoing monitoring and reporting of developments of the systemic recommendations contained in the report of the research prioritisation steering group. For the second pillar, 13 systemic changes are necessary to support prioritisation by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the STI system. The PAG is also making significant progress.

In June 2012 an intellectual property protocol was published outlining new structures to encourage more businesses to commercialise research and development by ensuring they could access the results of State-funded, effectively taxpayer funded, research and development with greater clarity and certainty. The PAG is also considering how application procedures for research funding can be adjusted to assess relevance to, and impact on, priority areas, as well as assessing excellence, with Science Foundation Ireland already leading the way in this regard.

In response to recommendations to align supply and demand of trained researchers, the Irish Research Council has rolled out an employment-based PhD and masters programme where awardees will be employees with the majority of time spent in-company. In response to the recommendation that research centres be more industry-focused, on 25 February the largest ever State-industry co-funded research investment was announced. This investment of €300 million is made up of €200 million of Exchequer funding and a €100 million co-investment by over 150 industry partners. This level of industry commitment is sure evidence of the value and potential of the research that will be carried out in each of the seven new world class SFI research centres established. These are research centres of excellence and scale. Under the awards programme, they will be funded over six years, support key growth areas and undertake research into major social challenges, including health, communications and energy. A capability to add "research spokes" around the original "hub" will make them more adaptable to account for changing circumstances and emerging research challenges.

To return to Science Week, I cannot over-emphasise how important it is as an annual national awareness raising event. It is an exciting collaboration of events run by colleges, schools, libraries, teachers, researchers and students throughout Ireland. Science Week has become an important event in many people's calendars and it is truly inspirational to see the numbers who turn out and support all of the events each year. Event organisers across the country become actively involved with Science Week each year and it is their dedication and hard work that make the week the success that it is. This year there are new key elements. A new festival in the midlands is bringing top-class exhibitions, workshops and talks, including Trinity College Dublin's Luke O'Neill and Canadian neuroscientist Deborah Saucier, to venues in counties Offaly, Westmeath and Laois.

A major new hub is being created in Temple Bar in Dublin this weekend where there will be a free experiential event at the Gallery of Photography, a free family event at Filmbase, a kids' science show at City Hall, as well as physics buskers on the streets. It is also encouraging that, yet again, festivals in Cork, Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Waterford and Limerick are all running an extensive programme of events this year.

Evidence from research carried out in 2012 by DSE, now the Discover programme, suggested the 18-24 year age cohort still did not consider science and technology industries interesting. Last year Science Week set out to change that perception and follow on, like for like research showed that among that age group interest had increased by 7% in science and 8% in engineering. Most of our children's career opportunities will be built around harnessing new and evolving technologies that are only now establishing themselves. It is critically important that we give students a window into these industries and the experiences of people working in them. It is also vital that we ensure students are engaging in science and scientific thinking at an early age. We must continue to encourage young school students to engage with scientific learning and thinking which, in turn, will encourage them to consider studying STEM subjects at second and third level.

Science Week serves as a magnet that continues to attract inquiring young students to the world of science and it stimulates their awareness of the many possibilities and pathways that study in this area will offer them. Therefore, I urge all Senators to check out scienceweek.ieand attend or promote as many events as possible. Not only will they be pleasantly surprised by the huge voluntary effort that has gone into the organisation of the week, but I also guarantee that they will, as I have done, learn and be entertained at the same time.