Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his views on the recent claims that demands by Science Foundation Ireland that State supported research must deliver an economic or social return is damaging science here and causing young researchers to emigrate; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51852/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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There has been much discussion across Ireland’s research system in recent months, much of it arising from the National Research Prioritisation Exercise and from other reforms being introduced across Ireland’s research system.

Ireland has substantial achievements in science over the past decade. We are now in the top 20 in the world for the quality of our scientific output, and in the top 10 globally in a number of specific areas such Immunology (3^rd) and Materials Science (8^th). The challenge now is to build on these achievements and take our performance to the next level, and that is what the reforms across our research system are aimed at achieving.

In February this year the Government agreed to the adoption of the recommendations of the Report of the Research Prioritisation Steering Group (referred to as the NRPE – the National Research Prioritisation Exercise) as a whole of Government policy goal. This essentially means that the majority of the state's investment in competitive, publicly performed R&D will be focussed on the 14 priority areas and 6 underpinning areas identified in the report - the areas that were judged most likely to deliver economic and societal impact and ultimately jobs.

In tandem with focussing investment in these 14 areas the report recommends that research funders ensure that they test for impact on, as well as relevance to, these priority areas in addition, of course, to continuing the drive for excellence in research. However, this does not mark a departure from funding in basic research and in fact the Steering Group's Report states clearly that "a healthy, balanced, sustainable research system supports all aspects of the research continuum and this cannot be achieved by focussing investment on only the applied part of the research continuum". Within the proportion of funded affected by the NRPE, basic research will also be supported but it must show relevance to and impact on one of the priority areas if it is within the funding that is being prioritised.

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 or so. We must succeed in both maintaining our quality research base and accelerating the delivery of the benefits of this investment at the same time and within the resources available.

Therefore consistent with Government policy, 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. It is important to reiterate that SFI was established under an enterprise ministry in 2000 and its mandate has always been to deliver on the future competitiveness needs of Irish enterprise. Therefore the relevance and impact of science being supported by SFI to the enterprise base is not a new development.

SFI will continue to fund research within the 14 prioritised areas and the 6 underpinning areas. SFI will be ensuring that the focus on commercial outcomes will not have any negative impact on the high standards of scientific research – it will continue to focus on research excellence with impact for Ireland.

It is also important to appreciate that SFI research grant funding is typically in the region of €150m per annum. This represents approximately 25% of the overall publicly funded R&D performed in the State. There are also significant research funding agencies spread across a range of Government Departments spanning Education, Health, Energy, Agriculture, Marine and the Environment.

For example, in addition to SFI, and with policy responsibility falling to the Department of Education and Skills, the Irish Research Council (IRC), was formally established in March 2012 by the Minister for Research and Innovation, Seán Sherlock TD. The IRC will continue the various activities of the two former Councils, IRCHSS and IRCSET. The remit of the IRC covers the full range of disciplines and has the broad remit of supporting and enhancing human capacity development; in particular at postgraduate and early stage postdoctoral researcher levels. Furthermore the IRC will support and encourage independent exploratory research.

The international research community is highly mobile so there will always in-flow and out-flow of talented researchers. There is no evidence to date to suggest that talented researchers are being forced to emigrate from Ireland as a consequence of the recent introduction of the Government’s Research Prioritisation policy. Since 2008 SFI has managed to maintain supports to a cohort of 3,000 or so researchers out of the national cohort of approximately 7,500 or so.