Surely the point of research at third-level is to allow people to investigate interesting science that may or may not have a commerical or economic benefit. After all, if you don’t do the research, how will you know?

The private sector performs research to achieve short-term goals. If we now insist that universities also only conduct research that has an economic impact in the short-term and can be justified on financial terms to the taxpayer then who is going to conduct the ‘maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but we don’t know yet’ research to drive future developments? In which case why bother conducting research at universities – just get the lecturers to teach.