Grant money comes through for research facilities

After nine months of confusion and frustration, 15 major research facilities appear poised to enjoy the benefits of a five-year, $150 million Federal Government grant scheme.

The group, which includes six bioscience centres, won grants of up to $16 million each last September under the Major National Research Facility (MNRF) scheme. As of the end of June, none had yet received any funds after repeated rounds of budget talks with government negotiators pressing them to downsize their funding expectations for the initial years of the program.

Their relief that the funds are finally being made available to them will probably outweigh lingering resentment that most won't get as much in the early years of the scheme as they originally expected.

Despite that, it appears most if not all have now agreed to sign off on a "take it or leave it" government offer and some expect funds to start flowing in the next few weeks.

Reaction to the final funding schedule by representatives of those research facilities who would comment publicly on the process was generally positive.

"I think we have been pretty well accommodated," said Australian Proteome Analysis Facility (APAF) director Prof Gary Cobon.

"The (funding) deeds have been signed and our first payments are being processed in Canberra."

Founded by a $6 million MNRF grant in 1996, APAF was awarded $16.5 million last September, more than any other bioscience applicant.

Cobon had to freeze advanced negotiations with equipment suppliers during the funding hiatus and to ask Macquarie University to meet some short-term operational costs.

APAF will now be able to put high-priority purchases back on track, Cobon said. They will include an upgrade of its bioinformatics systems and the purchase of a new mass spectrometer.

Under the agreement, APAF is still looking at a gap between its actual first year funding and what it originally expected but the shortfall is not as severe as once appeared likely.

Cobon said he was "quite satisfied" with the result for the APAF but was not sure that other institutes in the group shared his view.

Dr Susan Forrest, scientific director of the Australian Genome Research Facility, said her organisation had "moved our budgets around and made as many changes as we could" to comply with government requests.

She said she was "very happy" with the compromise that was worked out over the scheduling of installments on the $14 million that AGRF will receive over the next five years. It will allow AGRF to move some equipment purchases up by 12 months during the middle of the period, however money will still be thin in the initial phases.

"It looks like we will have to lease rather than purchase some items in the first year," Forrest said.

Other research facilities may have to borrow to meet commitments during the early stages of the grant period, which will increase their costs and dilute the effectiveness of the grant money.