Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the level of funding to Science Foundation Ireland over the years 2004 to 2011; its budget for 2012; the number of researchers supported in each year; the anticipated number of researchers supported next year; if conditions for qualifying for funding have changed since the budget; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37393/12]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will state the projections for the numbers of researchers to be supported under Science Foundation Ireland funding in each of the years 2012 to 2016 under the announced capital funding; the comparable figures for the past five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37396/12]

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 560 and 563 together.

Table 1 below sets out the Science Foundation Ireland expenditure for the period 2004 – 2011 inclusive. Table 2 below sets out the number of researchers supported by Science Foundation Ireland over the period 2004 – 2011 inclusive.

Science Foundation Ireland’s capital grant budget for 2012 is €156m, which will enable the Foundation to retain support for the current levels of approximately 3,000 researchers and 28 research centres. Table 3 below sets out Science Foundation Ireland’s 2012 budget. For 2012 the pay and administrative programme costs associated with running its various programmes include provision in respect of the Discover Science and Engineering programme, for which responsibility transferred from Forfas to Science Foundation Ireland in March 2012.

The Programme for Government commits to accelerating the commercialisation of research and exploitation of new technologies. Clearly given Ireland’s fiscal difficulties, there is a great imperative to ensure that publicly funded research and development will yield the maximum benefits for the country – most particularly in terms of downstream jobs.

Since the 2012 Budget there have been many policy actions completed which will impact across Ireland’s research ecosystem. These actions include the National Research Prioritisation exercise, the ASCTI report on Sustainability of Research Centres, and the streamlining of national IP arrangements amongst other things.

Given Ireland’s current fiscal circumstances there is a need to accelerate the delivery of economic and societal benefits from our investment in research by prioritising resources in areas of opportunity, building closer collaboration between the research base and enterprise and making it easier to commercialise and use new knowledge. However, we recognise that we cannot sustain this without maintaining the world class research base that we have built over the past decade.

Therefore consistent with Government policy, as detailed in the above reports and aligned to the Programme for Government, SFI is now seeking to build upon the groundwork already put in place by continuing to invest in excellent research and by engendering greater impact from its funded research for the benefit of Ireland. In this context, legislation is in preparation to enable SFI to fund applied research in addition to its existing remit to fund oriented basic research. Subject to debate in the Houses of the Oireachtas in the coming months, this legislation should be enacted by the end of 2012 or in early 2013.

Whilst there has been some reduction in capital funding to the SFI since the 2009 the Foundation has been able to sustain its direct support to a cohort of 3,000 researchers. The policy intention is that SFI can continue to provide this level of support in the years ahead but it shall be dependent on multiple variables, not just funding provision but also critically on the quality and strategic relevance for enterprise of the research applications being submitted. It shall also be dependent on wider factors such as what our international competitors are doing. In essence though, the principal conditions for qualifying for SFI grant funding remain unchanged, namely scientific excellence, as determined by rigorous international peer-review, and alignment with the strategic needs of Irish industry.

Appendix 1 – Tables

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

The €5m in the “Other” column above relates to the provision of E-Journals, which formed part of the transfer of certain functions from the Department of Education and Skills in May 2010. The E-Journals provision allows Irish based scientists access to key international scientific journals in electronic, database format. This provision, via SFI in 2011, was not an extra funding requirement for the Exchequer last year.