Paul Murphy warns of corporate capture in Research Ireland plan

Minister, I want to draw your attention, I'm sure you're aware, of the open letter signed by more than 2,300 academics and researchers really ringing the alarm bell about Research Ireland's 2026-2030 strategy. I just quote, the new strategy is structurally, rhetorically and materially focused on commercially translatable research and economic impact rather than supporting bedrock fundamental discovery research and research for the public good. Will you take on board, will you meet with the petitioners and will you intervene here? Yes, thank you, thank you Deputy. So, Taiseach Éireann Research Ireland was established, as you'll be aware, in 2024 with a legislative remit to promote excellence and research across all fields of activity and disciplines and its first strategy was published this March following extensive consultation and I'm satisfied that the strategy meets the legislative remit of the agency. The strategy and the publicly available program plan and my own central philosophy applies just two very simple criteria to all disciplines. Research should be excellent and it should be impactful and what impactful means is not narrowly defined, it's actually very broadly defined. Impact can mean many, many things. It can be societal resilience, it can be economic impact, it can be a long-term slow burn project that manifests in an entirely different way to how it was first conceived as with all basic and frontier research and so impact is actually not a narrow metric at all, it's such a quite a wide, quite a wide one and I've also codified into my department strategy curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge as a public good as one of four central pillars which I think speaks to the benefit of discovery research a priori without any particular exit conditions or targets at the start and the strategy does have a balanced portfolio across all disciplines and all career stages with funding across different areas of study also right across the AHSS, the arts humanities, social sciences, right through to STEM, right through to advanced engineering, mathematics type courses but really across the spectrum of funding. In terms of the letter I'm very familiar with it, I've read it obviously but I've also met the petitioners and the lead authors of it very recently, I'm engaged with them and you quoted one line from it, I think they've actually resided from that line because when we met they were focused their attention on one or two particular items and I think there is a level of rhetoric or subjectivity in the letter but that's their prerogative, some of the arguments I think don't build up scrutiny, some of them I think do have more merit and I'm certainly engaging with them on those that we've agreed to sit down on, sorry I was open to sit down on all of them but I think a number of them are perhaps a little bit political or subjective and having said that there certainly are some very good people involved and I've been engaging with them and I've asked Research Ireland to have a structured engagement with the group going forward to ensure that their concerns are heard and reflected in the new plan. Yeah I mean it seems to me effectively what's happened is a corporate or a partially corporate capture of our research program and if it continues this is going to be to the detriment of all of us, the detriment of our education system and really it'll be to the detriment of our society who will lose out on research that doesn't have an immediate commercial application but therefore is not being prioritised under the new strategy. The petitioners emphasise that there was a lack of participatory process in the development of this strategy, it wasn't based on evidence, they emphasise that what you see here is industry-centred, commercially focused, profit-seeking priorities at the expense of arts, humanities and social sciences and they particularly warn about what is the dismantling of the current PhD scholarship and post-doctoral fellowship programs. That's what's being proposed and instead then a prioritisation of profit-related, commercially driven, driven by corporations research which again could be to the detriment of all of us. Yeah so I think there were seven bullet points in the letter, I think six of them have been accepted now, maybe perhaps not the concerns that there were and I think engagement was helpful in that regard because Research Ireland stand with the authors and engaged with a number of those points. I would strongly reject the assertion of corporate culture, again maybe it's a little bit political and subjective, I appreciate the MPs hadn't to say it but I don't think it's a fair characterisation. I would say there is no requirement whatsoever that there must be an immediate or even ever economic impact and the fact that the strategy is very wide-ranging and allows for significant funding of discovery research, as I have always argued for in fact, and also that there are no metrics tied to corporate outputs as the deputy might have suggested so I think that's probably more than a little unfair. I do take the point on the Government of Ireland scholarship, I think that is the one that we agreed needs to be revisited and examined and there are certainly merits in the proposed new approach but I also accept that there are concerns raised which are legitimate as well so there is an engagement underway facilitated by myself but ultimately between the Research Ireland and the research community and I've had a number of meetings on that in recent weeks and continue to do so. Hi okay just I mean to confirm from what the Minister is saying that you are open to changes taking place continuing to take place in relation to this strategy that would obviously be welcome. I would ask the Minister to commit to prioritise research that is for the public good research on economic inequities, democratic participation, mental health, housing injustices, climate justice, education, the full range of human experiences so societal processes must be valued on its own terms. It's a quote from the petition which I think is very important and I would make the point that the current proposal that we have suggests that non-applied research has to demonstrate its future economic utility in order to qualify for funding and that is like precisely the problem in terms of short-term economic utility focus which then leads to a downgrading of humanity, social sciences etc in favour of those that have a more immediate commercial application which would be a real problem. Thanks Deputy Minister. I don't think it actually does say that Deputy and I take that in a genuine spirit of partnership I'm not trying to cut you out or correct you when I'm saying if you can find where it says that bring it to my attention I'd welcome you to do so and we'll have a look at it. I know the letter makes those claims I don't think that's such a borne out in a detailed study of the strategy and if it was it's not something I would support because I've been on record in this house for many years saying that we need to support research across the full TRL spectrum and from discovery frontier research right through to applied and of course applied research has a really strong place in economic engagement and driving our enterprise and our knowledge economy is at the core and that's creating jobs, that's creating talent, that's creating knowledge and that we can support both our economy and society but of course there's a really strong place for applied research but equally discovery research is at the heart of all knowledge ultimately and how most of the leading significant progressions of society and civilization have come about through discovery research and in terms of funding for the arts humanities etc and there that is ring fenced within the strategy and it's proportionate to international comparisons and international benchmarks and certainly on a par with the historic funding of arts humanities etc and through different research agencies be that IRC, be that SFI, be the previous organisation so there's no reduction of that at all and the strategy or elsewhere and in fact that's actually a ring fence fund.