In the Dark

This post is to draw attention of Irish colleagues to an open letter going around about the “Strategy” recently publuished by Research Ireland (Taighde Éireann). I have signed it, as have over a thousand others, including many colleagues at Maynooth University. The opening paragraph of this letter reads:

We, the undersigned, are writing to express deep concern about the priorities within Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland’s recently published 2026-2030 strategy and programme plan that will guide the distribution of over €4.55 billion in public funds over the next five years. 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. The disproportionate focus on industry interests instead of discovery research and the public interest marginalises the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) and the fundamental sciences, and minimises research for social good and research that is truly innovative and ground-breaking.

You can read the rest of the letter, and also sign it if you are so inclined, here. The letter highlights the downgrading of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences but is relevant to anyone in any discipline who believes in funding research as a public good, not just a means of channeling funding to the private sector.

When I arrived in Ireland in 2017 the thing that struck me immediately was that funding for basic or fundamental research – especially in the sciences – is extremely poor, and in some areas non-existent. That is still the case now. I was cautiously optimistic when Research Ireland was created from the merger of Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council, but the general thrust seems to be more of the same. Worse, some of the few valuable programmes (such as those for funding PhD students and postdoctoral researchers) are being completely dismantled.

For what it’s worth, I’ll repeat a view that I have shared previously on many occasions:

… “commercially useful” research should not be funded by the taxpayer through research grants. If it’s going to pay off in the short term it should be funded by private investors, venture capitalists of some sort or perhaps through some form of National Investment Bank. When the public purse is so heavily constrained, it should only be asked to fund those things that can’t in practice be funded any other way. That means long-term, speculative, curiosity driven research.

This is pretty much the opposite of the Research Ireland strategy. It wants to continue concentrating public funds in projects that can demonstrate immediate commercial potential. Taxpayer’s money used in this way ends up in the pockets of entrepreneurs if the research succeeds and, if it doesn’t, the grant has not fulfilled its stated objectives and the funding has therefore, by its own standards, been wasted.

My proposal, therefore, is phase out research grants for groups that want to concentrate on commercially motivated research and replace them with research loans. If the claims they make to secure the advance are justified, they should have no problem repaying the funds from the profits they make from patent income or other forms of exploitation. If not, then they will have to pay back the loan from their own funds (as well as being exposed as bullshit merchants). The loans could be made at very low interest rates and still save a huge amount of the current research budget. I suggest these loans should be repayable in 3-5 years, so in the long term this scheme would be self-financing. I think a large fraction of research in, e.g., the applied sciences and engineering should be funded in this way. I think it is wrong to nationalise the risk only to privatise the profits.

The money saved by replacing grants to commercially driven research groups with loans could be re-invested in those areas where public investment is really needed, such as purely curiosity-driven science. Here grants are needed because the motivation for the research is different. Much of it does, in fact, lead to commercial spin-offs, and when that happens it is a very good thing, but these are likely to appear only in the very long term. But just because this research does not have an immediate commercial benefit does not mean that it has no benefit. For one thing, it is subjects such as Astronomy and Particle Physics that inspire young people to get interested in science in the first place.

You don’t have to agree with this, however, to sign the letter.