Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On making it visible, we often talk about giving individual examples but if people can see large-scale examples, either in the public land owned by something like Coillte or large-scale public retrofitting, they set the visibility of the possibility and change. To follow up, it flows from what you were saying but I might just add something, also for Professor McElwain, about the idea of grants for ecological care. We do not have to tie it to carbon farming necessarily.

There was reference to the next research agenda, the vision and partnerships. There is a context of precarity within our higher education and research institutions. As a result, there tends to be an over-reliance sometimes on commercial or private-sector contracts in research, because there are such short-term contracts. The employment control framework is part of it and there are a lot of other issues. I am saying this because the Research and Innovation Bill is going through the Seanad. I will be bringing amendments to it later today. There is a chance for us to try to get research right through our new research infrastructure. How do we get that right so that it supports long-term thinking and public thinking? I am emphasising "public" because it can be the missing piece around long-term, public research for the public good and even public-public partnerships around research, as well as security for researchers so they can plan their careers. We want to have people going into this area and not all going to the tech companies and so on.

I mentioned public-public partnerships and I wonder if our guests could comment on those, including with the global south. This is really important research and it frames what is coming for Ireland and the different scenarios of where we could be in Ireland in a few years. We know we are already seeing the devastating impacts of climate change in the global south. I am thinking of the importance of partnership, technology transfer and ideas co-operation with global south researchers as well.