Ireland is "getting its act together" when it comes to winning research funding from the European Research Council (ERC), but we are still playing catch-up when compared with some competing countries.
So says Prof Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, president of the council who arrives in Dublin this morning to attend a series of meetings.
He is a true VIP when it comes to the conduct of research in Ireland. Council grants are considered the gold standard when it comes to winning EU funding for research.
Difficult
For this reason it is also one of the most difficult of places to actually win grant support for research.
Ireland has won a substantial €97 million in funding from the council since its inception in 2007. Irish researchers have won 75 awards over this time across the full range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and the sciences.
Prof Bourguignon believes, however, that there is plenty of room for improvement in our success rate and he is anxious that Ireland work hard to tap into those resources.
We had a weak start with few applications and very few granted, but things have improved after supports were put in place by Government agencies to help better our success rate.
“Ireland has been performing well recently,” he said. “The size of the country is an issue. The big countries get more grants and so far the UK receives the most. But the Netherlands are doing best in terms of population size.”
Ireland, he believes, is in the middle. "Ireland is becoming acutely aware of what it takes to submit a successful project. I think the country is definitely moving upward and this is consistent with efforts being made by institutions such as the Royal Irish Academy, the universities and the Government."
Be ambitious
The key to winning a council grant is to be ambitious and to look towards the horizon. The research being done in Ireland is “already at a good level”, he said, but an ERC grant requires more. “The ERC is very much about giving researchers the opportunity to pursue the most ambitious idea you have but this does not come out of the blue,” Prof Bourguignon said.
There has to be a track record. “If you have a low level of research you have less capability of applying and succeeding. You can’t take advantage if you are not already involved and using these technologies.”
It can also be difficult for people to understand why money needs to be spent on blue sky, frontiers research. "Science is very much a living organism and so we have to anticipate areas that will be of increasing importance. If you limit yourself you will miss the new paradigm or the new frontier."
Basic research is also important to companies, he said. “If you talk to industrial people they are concerned about applied research but they realise that without having the proper background coming from basic and blue skies research they will miss the next generation of activity.”
In basic research the non-viable can become viable, he says. “We don’t know where the solutions may come from so we have to keep all the lines open,” he says. He cites the internet, originally a tool used by scientists but a technology that has transformed society.
