Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the credentials of people in this Chamber, especially the spokespeople, and the people bringing forward all of the amendments. I am aware that Senators on both sides of the House were looking to bring forward amendments and the Department and its officials were engaging over the many Stages on this over the past number of years.

On the amendments to hand, I will highlight a number of points. I am aware that Senator Higgins was speaking about the use of the word "excellence" and in the more recent amendments about the sustainable development goals.

When one looks at the goals, out of those 17, many of those have been funded through the Irish Research Council and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. Many of our social sciences are being funded by these bodies around the goals that we mentioned here such as ending poverty and hunger, health and education, gender equality, innovation, and sustainable cities.

We have many centres of excellence which are also funded through Science Foundation Ireland, particularly in the MaREI, the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine, which centres are looking across some of these environmental areas. That is absolutely crucial. It is very important, as the Senators have said and as has been acknowledged by the Minister previously, that where we are looking at reviews of this legislation and look forward to it being implemented, but we first of all need to see it being put into place because this is ground-changing legislation. It will very much change the way we do things at third level in the funding of our institutions and supporting and updating the governance of these institutions and to ensuring the students have a voice in that governance at each stage, particularly of our higher education institutions, HEIs.

The challenge we are seeing here is that hopefully when it is in place and operating as best practice, as it should, we will then be able to look at that segment around the policies and their implementation and at where we see gaps, particularly if there are gaps around the sections that have been highlighted.

Some of the amendments which were highlighted by Senators Higgins, Ruane, Flynn and Black were around research sharing and technology transfer. On that amendment, with due regard to the article of the United Nations framework, I will state that we already have a great number of technology transfer offices particularly within each of our HEIs which are working with researchers to do that and have been funded through the colleges and universities. It is very important that the research offices within the colleges are also doing the transfer. The technology transfer is almost a separate stage to the research office. They work quite closely together but their focus is very different.

One can imagine then that the research office is there to support researchers in putting applications for funding to all different agencies whereas the technology transfer offices are there to support a person when a novel idea is developed as part of that research. It may have a potential commercial or societal application where it may benefit society as a whole.We must develop that to ensure it will not just be in a book that sits on a desk somewhere but will actually be used by us and in society and become something that does not only exist in a thesis as such.

I will address the last couple of points. We highlighted very clearly that academic freedom will be respected and that this Bill would in no way, shape or form interfere with academic freedom for either staff or students. Protecting those academic freedoms has also been guaranteed through a number of other Bills.

I very much believe this Bill will support research and development, particularly around the sustainable development goals, SDGs, because that is where funding is available at many levels through the Exchequer in Ireland but also at a European level. It is evident that our researchers are applying for and getting funding in these particular areas. There are probably a few other points but I will finish there. I know the intentions here are well-grounded. I believe this Bill has much to offer and I cannot wait to see the results when it has been put in place.