Sustainability of Research Centres - Advisory Science Council

the following are the suggested minimum operational personnel that should be supported by base-centre-
funding for centres in each group 89 :
Group 1: Centre Director, plus administration staff appropriate to the centre’s size. Commercial and
technology transfer activities should be managed via the host’s standard processes and support
functions.
Group 2: Centre Director, project/commercial manager(s) plus administration staff appropriate to the
centre’s size. Large centres with large-scale facilities used by different stakeholders may also require
an operations manager. Multi-site centres may also require coordinators.
Group 3: Centre Director, project/commercial managers plus administration staff appropriate to the
centre’s size.
Group 4: Base-centre-funding has a different meaning for these (typically) standalone State-owned
centres. Funding is providing from their parent department to cover the majority of its direct and
indirect costs. Therefore of the order of 60-80% of total funding is provided as core funding to cover
the bulk of a centres’ research and support staff, consumables and facilities costs. However, in the
case of centres that have been assigned to this group but are located in HEIs (or jointly established
with HEIs) and have been initiated based on winning a competition for proposals, guidance on funding
of centre operational staff akin to that of Group 2 centres may more appropriately apply.
4.3.1.2 Research Personnel
Consistency of personnel within a centre provides better opportunity to optimise the return on investment
in the centre and help it to deliver on objectives in a sustainable manner. As a consequence of the
educational role of the public research system there is a naturally high turnover of research performers
within a research centre (through post doctoral and contract researchers). With a view to building
knowledge, know how, best practice and collaborative relationships, there is a preference to have some
level of stability within the research teams of the centre in order to effect greater returns on investment
in the long term. There is currently a lack of clarity in relation to the career pathway for researchers in
many HEIs in Ireland, and this has the potential to cause damage to the great advances that have
happened in the development of the research capacity over the past decade. A previous ACSTI study 90 has
investigated and recommended the need for research career paths which address this point. This report
supports the need to implement the recommendations presented previously.
4.3.1.3 Research Support Personnel
Research support personnel such as clinical research nurses, data managers and research technicians often
play an underpinning role in the delivery of research objectives. In some cases base-centre-funding for
centres may be used to fund such research support personnel, or in other cases the roles may be filled by
89 The facilities requirements and affiliated support personnel and the research support personnel required for different centres vary significantly .Thus
the need for these type of personnel cannot be estimated in a general sense and so are dealt with elsewhere in report.
90 Towards a Framework for Research Careers, Advisory Council for Science Technology and Innovation, October 2008
Sustainability of Research Centres 40 June 2012