Rose Conway-Walsh urges stronger research funding and HPV access

and obviously I would like to thank you Minister but thank everyone involved in making Science Week happen it's a wonderful initiative that provides a great chance to recognise and to celebrate the role of science in our everyday lives one of the key themes of this year's Science Week as you said was the initiative creating our future being run by Science Foundation Ireland and creating our future will ask people and communities across Ireland to submit ideas on what researchers can do to create a better future and I obviously support that idea because reaching out to the public for sources of research topics is a good idea and I'd like to lend my voice to the call to people to make submissions before the deadline at the end of November I'm glad that the highest number of applications is in from Sligo at the moment and I hope that will be a spur on to Mayo to get more applications in and I just think it's so so important even the context of climate change I was listening to Ulster Radio a few days ago and there was a woman with disabilities speaking on it and there was a woman with disabilities speaking on it but she was talking about the importance of replacing plastics and how she has to use a straw and how important a straw is for her in fact her life depends on it to feed her but a paper straw isn't of any use to her so there's a whole lot of innovations there that are waiting to happen that really that need to be met in order for us to meet our climate change targets and the challenges around that one of the few positives to come out of covid as you said is that it's capitulated as scientists and scientific data onto the mainstream and scientists have become household names now many of them scientific terms have entered everyday conversation and the media and the public have shown a fantastic aptitude for debating complex scientific concepts the covid vaccine and the vaccines such as you spoke about the HPV vaccine and the HPV vaccine and others are one of the starkest examples of the value of scientific research I just have to say while we're talking about HPV we really need to stop charging people 600 euro when they're recommended that their doctors has that and so I think we need to link everything up to make it count you know we need to look at the children maybe the young girls who have missed and not charge them 600 euro now or when a doctor insists that you really need this HPV vaccine that that that we make it that we make it available to people and bring it in under maybe the treatment purchase fund but the pandemic has shown the importance of a scientifically engaged public and another dynamic is the intersection between science and research and decision making science advice should have a clear and structured role in all forms of public policy creation and assessment the head of the head of the science foundation Ireland that was announced today I really do welcome that these roles were amalgamated during the austerity years and there's an inherent conflict of interest between these roles and more importantly both positions are hugely important and justify a standalone position a positive step but far more needs to be done to provide a real structure for this type of engagement at a European level there are structures that facilitate engagement between researchers and policy makers such as the European Commission's such as the European Commission scientific advice mechanism but here in Ireland we do not have a strong link between public policy and academic research it needs to be improved we need to implement a structured systematic approach Ireland has also unusual in in having no layer of public research institutes between institutes of higher education and government and as a result higher education performs the function as Ireland's Ireland as Ireland as Ireland's de facto public research system as Ireland's de facto public research system this is something they do very well but it's also a role that needs to be recognised in value if we want to deliver the public policy outcomes we all want to see whether it's in climate change as we said or in health or agriculture or food security or any other area core funding for higher education forms the bedrock of our public research research system as you know minister the success of other research funding agencies such as science foundation Ireland the health research board and Irish research council depend on leveraging higher education to achieve specific objectives and the funding of our higher education is the foundation of all public research investment in the state for the best way to celebrate science week is to move higher education out of the austerity mode and this is essential if we want to wrap up and rebalance ramp up and rebalance ramp up and rebalance the research and development and if we want to deliver an all-Ireland research ecosystem to produce better social and economic outcomes minister success of Fine Gael governments have spent less on research and development as a percentage of GDP GNI and even modified GNI every year since 2011 less as a share of public expenditure every year since 2012 so we you know we need to just look at that and we need to you know be upfront about it and we need to put the money where for the funding where it needs to be this leaves us far below the EU average and the government's own targets set as part of the innovation strategy at 220 an increase in publicly funded research is essential to tackle the the many social and economic challenges we face to produce a sustainable economy public funding should be open access and available to all academics and the wider public to ensure the greatest level of collaboration economic reports show that every one euro invested in R&D more than five euro is returned to the economy but public investment in research also leverages higher higher levels of industry investment and leads to accessing more competitive research support through international funds like Horizon Europe and also it's vital that we engage internationally now Sinn Féin have repeatedly called on the government to become an associated member of CERN most famous for the large hadron collider we should have access and be involved in this amazing project I also believe we need to establish a national forum on research infrastructure needs on an all-ireland basis and I know we we share that vision minister and I would certainly work with you and with others to make that happen it was recently said to me by the Provost of Trinity Professor Linda Doyle that the state needs to fund the hardest things to fund and I think this is what we need to look at as well when it comes to research that is invariably the infrastructure involved from there from there our brilliant researchers can do the rest we need to provide that infrastructure and I'd like to have a conversation with you about that separately whether that's a systematic web archive a publicly owned genomic database or material characterization infrastructure we need to ensure we are ambitious about the needs of the public research sector and we need to value the research and value all of the researchers searchers including PhD students PhD students and researchers and workers should be recognized for the valuable work that they do we need to increase investment in public research we need to make sure that includes the working conditions of all researchers of all researchers that they're improved we need to balance public research funding between applied and foundational research between STEM and the social sciences and just as importantly between the regions higher education research has consistently broken down roughly 88% and 12% between university and technological higher education sectors respectively in the international research and flows through enterprise R&D activity and in terms of business expenditure on R&D the eastern and midland region saw 67% and the south got 21% in the north and west spend only accounted for 12% so there's regional disparities there we need to look at as well and that we need to address and there are opportunities to do that now with the technological universities as well in terms of research personnel the eastern and midland region accounted for 60% compared with 24% in the south and just 15% in the north and west so we need to address that I am glad that you agree with me in terms of partition it's a persistent factor whenever we talk about the development for the northwest and we need to break down partition partition has been a disaster for both states on this island and continues to severely impact it I do think through things like things like higher education innovation and things like higher education innovation and science we can break down so many barriers and not just for the actual immediate work that is done around that and the innovations but right across the island even in creating an understanding between all communities across this island so that we have that positive externality from that as well as us you know all caring together about the island that we live in and all fulfilling the potential of our island as a whole so it serves all communities all regions all regions and all peoples Thank you