Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The amendment will insert a new subsection to section 40, which again looks at the conditions of funding aspect. It will be important to see how the ethics aspect is interpreted and I will look to that with interest, but one thing that made a huge impact was the interpretation made by the Irish Research Council, which decided on an ethical basis that it needed to support gender equality within our higher education institutions. It made the important decision to insert a conditionality into its funding for research whereby it would give research grants only to institutions that had engaged in advance on the Athena SWAN charter, that is, the charter on gender equality and the crucial importance of having better gender parity within our institutions.

It is important to have guidance within the conditions of funding. I am delighted excellence will be interpreted in the way it will be, but it is important that follow through all the way to the conditions of funding. We still do not have a guarantee that that will be reflected in the conditions of funding, but what should be reflected in the conditions of funding is that same provision - we have a useful precedent for this from the Irish Research Council - relating to the Athena SWAN charter and the meeting of basic standards for the advancement of gender equality. Unfortunately, a lot of institutions started taking serious action only when they were required to do so by the conditions of funding. The advances that have been made since that decision to insert a condition of funding relating to gender equality are far more significant than those made-----