Legal amendment will open way to research collaboration

The Act that defines how Science Foundation Ireland may spend its €150 million annual budget is up for amendment and the revised Bill is working its way through the Oireachtas. It was due for debate in the Dáil in the middle of March but got pushed out of the queue after late debates on other issues.

The science community is watching its progress with interest, given the Bill will formally sanction the foundation’s active investment in applied research. The original Act permitted investment only in basic research and the change is causing some trepidation as researchers try to gauge how the new Bill will affect their ability to draw down State support for frontier science.

Another change is attracting far less interest, probably because most scientists here would support it. The Industrial Development (Science Foundation Ireland) (Amendment Bill 2012) will alter long-standing restrictions which prevent disbursement of State research funds to a scientist or research project based outside the jurisdiction.

This meant there were legislative prohibitions, for example, on the Government deciding with political counterparts in the Northern Ireland Assembly to co-fund research or buy equipment or make a joint bid for EU funding which in itself may have involved making investments in other institutions.

The foundation has been anxious to change this for some time, as has its director general Prof Mark Ferguson. While the opportunities for such investment arise only occasionally, particularly in a cross-Border rather than a trans-European context, the foundation was hamstrung in that it could not support even the most worthy cause.

All this will change assuming the Bill passes through the Oireachtas without substantial alteration. Major changes are unlikely given the full support of both Government parties but also of Fianna Fáil, whose spokesman on enterprise Dara Calleary has already expressed support for the measure.

The change will help in a variety of ways, Ferguson believes. Modern scientific research increasingly depends on access to wildly expensive yet necessary equipment, for example, advanced microscopy devices that can see individual atoms when working in nanotechnology.

It is advantageous if the high cost of these devices can be shared on a cross-Border basis, with the return being access to this advanced equipment. And given the fact that both the EU and the US support cross-Border initiatives, joint funding would probably help to leverage additional international support.

The legislative change should also greatly increase opportunities for cross-Border research collaborations where both parties North and South have to contribute some level of funding. It also means that North-South groups could in turn join with UK-based or EU-orchestrated groups to pursue research.

The EU already specialises in multiple partner collaborations, but bids from this island would have greater impact if made from Ireland as a whole. It might allow us to capture joint-lead positions in EU consortia if university partners join forces on a cross-Border basis to go after Horizon 2020 or European Space Agency funding.

The change will not trigger an immediate drain on our limited State research resources, says Ferguson. While there have been projects in the not too distant past that could not be pursued because of the statute bar, these were relatively rare. And assuming the Bill passes, Ireland could choose to participate or not on a case-by-case basis, when it seemed “sensible to do so”, he says . Participation in such projects would be “opportunistic”, arising when there was a clear advantage to our research agenda.

Even so, the research community in the Republic has proven to be highly resourceful in the past when faced with extremely meagre funding. When there was almost no funding there was the EU Esprit programme and the local BioResearch Ireland. When the Celtic Tiger roared there was plenty of money at home, so few tended to look further afield. Now that finance has tightened, the EU's Framework Programme 7 and support from the European Research Council are there to be tapped into.

Anything that strengthens the researcher’s hand when bidding for external support should be exploited. While one might expect a competitive edge to emerge on joint bids whether involving partners from the Republic only or on a North-South basis, more can be won through collaboration than on an individual basis. Critical mass often wins out in the end.

The temptation to invest outside the jurisdiction could not get out of hand. While the foundation might identify promising collaborations, it would be up the the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton to sanction an investment.

The foundation and the Minister work in close cooperation, however, and understand where they want to go with Ireland’s research effort. So clashes over whether to support a cross-Border research investment are unlikely to arise.