Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 8, line 24, to delete “where they have not been used previously”.

I congratulate the Minister on his new role. I look forward to engaging with him on this and other legislation.

This group of amendments aims to address some of the questions around the definitions in the Bill. By strengthening and widening the definitions, we will be able to derive more in the longer term from what will be landmark legislation and a landmark new infrastructure in respect of research and innovation.

Amendment No. 1 seeks to delete the phrase “where they have not been used previously” as the definition of “innovation” in the Bill. The rationale for this amendment is that the definition in the Bill would constrain innovation to brand-new ideas, methods, products, processes, policies and services and not allow for innovation to encompass the expansion or deepening of knowledge. If, for example, we look to some of the extraordinary innovation we have seen in the State, it has often used existing ideas, methods, products, processes, policies and services in new ways. For example, we have seen existing crafts or ideas being reapplied to deliver for the circular economy or for our new climate targets. In fact, in achieving the circular economy and our climate innovation, much of what is innovation in the climate area goes back to older ideas and methods. It revisits them, brings them to new purposes and applies them in new ways. Another recognised example is the work of one of the satellite companies in the State, which has won awards for innovation. Its technology was not completely unused or applied previously. Rather, it built on existing satellite technology that it had developed over many years and then applied it in new ways.That was recognised as a very crucial innovation at a European level.

Amendment No. 2 is an alternative to amendment No. 1, in that amendment No.1 simply deletes that phrase in order that we do not have an unnecessary limitation on what can be properly addressed and recognised as innovation, whereas amendment No. 2 seeks to replace that with something that is very much spelling out the fact of "the application of ideas, methods, products, processes, policies and services in new ways or for new purposes". One is a straight deletion of what I think might be tying our hands unnecessarily in narrowing what can be construed as innovation, while the other explicitly names that application for new purposes or ways.

Amendment No. 3 seeks to change the definition of research as proposed on Second Stage by adding the phrase "in order to increase or deepen knowledge and understanding ... and devise new or improved applications of available knowledge and understanding". At the moment, the language in the Bill is a strange definition of research that I have not seen before and it is almost quite an extractive or a utilitarian version of research, where it talks about the "stock of knowledge". This is quite a weird phrase that I would not normally have seen applied to knowledge. There is then the application of the existing knowledge for particular new applications and the devising of new applications. It is a very material and narrow version of what research can cover. We know that much of what good research can do is not just to increase almost a commercial supply of knowledge but it may change the knowledge we have and can transform and deepen knowledge. This is why I mention the word "understanding" in this amendment, which is crucial.

It may be that we are not acquiring 20 new facts but we are acquiring new understanding of those facts and that can be very transformative and powerful, and a very important part of what research can do. That amendment would seek to replace the language of speaking of "a stock of knowledge" and instead is talking about the increasing or deepening of knowledge and understanding.

The "stock of knowledge" phrase is oddly reminiscent of what Paulo Freire has described in the past as the banking model of education where knowledge is something that is deposited rather than something that is gained, transformed and deepened through dialogue and other methods, and through the understanding of the other.

Amendment No. 4 seeks to amend the definition of research by inserting the provision that we include the deepening and not just the increasing of knowledge. This might seem like a minor amendment but, again, it is trying to expand the definition to reflect that knowledge is not just something that is gained in multiple subjects but is deepened and explored. I am speaking, for example, of somehow and sometimes the way in which we take existing knowledge, not just to devise new applications for it, but where we shift or change our understanding of it. That can be an extraordinary form of innovation in, for example, the social sciences where we know that very often the exact same graph or data, examined in a different way, can lead to extraordinarily different outcomes.

We know, for example, that many universities are engaged currently in the processes of decolonisation whereby existing knowledge we may have had for many years, which may have come and may have been framed from a past of colonisation, is being re-examined. If one looks to the British Museum, for example, with a different perspective; one's understanding shifts. The same facts, data and knowledge may be there but the understanding is different.

Again, I say to the Minister, that these amendments may seem to an extent to be philosophical, which they are, but they are also very practical. The first two amendments are around ensuring that we do not have an unnecessary narrowing of what was proposed. The second two are around research but if we think that this Bill is expected to be the foundation for the next ten, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 100 years of research and innovation in the State, then it is very important that we get the foundations right.That is why I hope the Minister will engage with and consider these proposals for, as I say, strengthening the definitions put forward in the Bill.