In the Dark

There’s a new piece in the Irish Times (sponsored by the recently formed Research Ireland, but probably behind a paywall) that makes promising noises about “Blue Skies” research. No jokes about the Irish weather, please. I quote:

The merger of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Irish Research Council (IRC) to form Research Ireland on August 1st, 2024, has opened up new possibilities and opportunities for the Irish research community. The new organisation now oversees competitive research funding across all disciplines, ranging from the arts, humanities and social sciences through to science, technology, engineering and maths, as well as across the full spectrum spanning curiosity-driven to applied research.

“SFI was enterprise and Stem-focused,” explains Research Ireland deputy chief executive Dr Ciarán Seoighe. “The IRC was not set up on a statutory basis so that meant that the arts, humanities and social sciences [AHSS] were not in the statutory research funding system. That put us behind other countries. We weren’t getting the full benefit of research in those areas. By creating Research Ireland we are able to support the full spectrum.”

He also points out that SFI wasn’t able to fund blue-skies, fundamental research, but Research Ireland can. “We need that research to create the new ideas and innovations that become applied research in years to come. By creating Research Ireland, we now have the ability to tap into and unlock the full potential of research in Ireland.”

The last bit is encouraging – or at least less discouraging – for those of us who work in fundamental science than the previous regime. The thing that struck me immediately when arriving in Ireland from the UK that funding for basic or fundamental research – especially in the sciences – is extremely poor. That is still the case now. This situation is largely the result of a high-level report published in 2012. This identified 14 priority areas of research that are most likely to give demonstrable economic and societal return, and where Ireland should focus the majority of competitive funding. Four criteria were used in selecting the 14 priority areas for future, competitively-awarded investment for economic objectives:

1. the area is associated with a large global market or markets in which Irish-based enterprises already compete or can realistically compete;
2. publicly performed R&D in Ireland is required to exploit the area and will complement private sector research and innovation in Ireland;
3. Ireland has built or is building (objectively measured) strengths in research disciplines relevant to the area; and,
4. the area represents an appropriate approach to a recognized national challenge and/or a global challenge to which Ireland should respond.

The `vast majority’ of SFI’s funding was directed towards the 14 areas so defined, leaving virtually nothing for anything else, an outcome which has dire implications for `blue skies’ research.

I think this is a deeply misguided short-term policy, which has had and will continue to have strongly negative effects on science in Ireland in the medium to long term, especially because Ireland spends so little of its GDP on research in the first place. There’s simply no point in trying to persuade world-leading researchers to come to Ireland if insufficient funds are available to enable them to establish here; the politicians’ welcoming platitudes will never be enough. This makes appointment of world-class researchers to Irish universities extremely difficult so, given that is what we are trying to do in Maynooth now, the change of tone is welcome.

The problem is that the creation of Research Ireland has not involved any more money that was previous allocated to the SFI and IRC separately. Unless there is a budget uplift – which in my view would be a good use for at least part of the huge windfall tax from Apple – any increase in basic research will have to be offset by cuts elsewhere.

It seems appropriate re-iterate part of my response to a previous funding crisis in the UK, about using taxpayer’s money to fund research in universities:

… “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 what Irish government thinks. It wants to concentrate 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, would be to 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). In the current economic situation 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.