A bold gamble that will give Ireland a globally recognised name in international technology research, or a costly mistake that will turn out to be a drain on State resources?

The £130 million (€165 million) Media Lab Europe (MLE) - an offshoot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - has been the subject of much debate in the past weeks.

And the contention by MLE's new chief executive Mr Rudolph Burger that it is a gamble and that there are no "surefire things" is likely to reinforce its opponents' attitudes that the Government has erred.

"Of course it's a gamble," he said. "What in life is worth doing that is not a gamble."

However, Mr Burger argues that the consequences of not making this move could be far worse.

"The news has been full of a downturn in the market, with possible lay-offs in Gateway. As a former chief technology officer with NEC Packard Bell, we were in the process of moving all of our PC manufacturing to the Far East. So the value-added component of doing the final assembly of PCs is likely to go away. I think many of the businesses on which Ireland has been growing on the back of in the last 10 years are vulnerable," he said.

So he believes the timing of MLE is very opportune within the Irish IT sector. "I see it as kick-starting or catalysing the movement of the Irish IT industry to move up the food chain towards more value-added business, basically focusing on the creation of intellectual property as opposed to the execution, support or sale of somebody's else's intellectual property. That's going to require some bold moves and they will appear risky."

The risk to the Irish Government is its initial investment in the project, he said. Contrary to some claims, the State will not be called on to fund the ongoing operation.

"That will not be the primary source of funding for MLE. The primary sources of funding are the commercial sponsorships."

MLE will operate on the same basis as MIT's media lab in the US, which has been running for 15 years and which receives its funding from around 180 corporations, half of them from outside the US. The lab generates between $30$40 million (€31.91E42.54 million) in sponsor revenue each year, according to Mr Burger. The Irish-based operation has already signed up sponsors, he said. Eircom was an early sponsor, as was Esat founder Mr Denis O'Brien, who now sits on the MLE board. Two "significant" sponsors will be announced in coming days, according to Mr Burger.

The debate behind funding also plays into the debate on peer review, according to Mr Burger. While academics in Irish universities had their research reviewed by their peers, this was not required of those working in the lab, according to recent claims.

"We have review - it's simply not the same model as academic research," countered Mr Burger. "Our review process is - is this work that's going on in the lab considered to be important and relevant enough to the sponsors of the lab for them to continue putting money into it by way of sponsorship? If our work ceases to be relevant, the sponsorship dries up."

But one of the key criticisms that has been levelled at the project has been the vague nature of MIT's work in the US, which makes it difficult to measure its performance in monetary terms, and claims that the media lab in the US has produced few products or direct contributions to technological developments compared to "serious" labs such as those at IBM or Stanford.

"Would 180 sponsors continue to be funding an institute to the tune of $30- $40 million a year if they considered it to be a worthless exercise?" said Mr Burger.

"Perhaps you can pull the wool over people's eyes once or twice, but you can't do that over a period of 15 years. I think the answer is self-evident and there for all to see. The media lab in the US is a world-class institution, continues to attract some of the best minds in the world and has a list of sponsors that would be the envy of any research establishment."

Much has been made here of the possibility of the lab's research into e-commerce, but Mr Burger refuses to be drawn on specifics.

"I consider it to be an absolutely losing proposition to decide ahead of time what the exciting and hot areas are going to be in five years' time. We could do that but we would almost certainly be wrong," he said.

So what exactly will MLE do?

"What MLE is all about is doing the research that exists on the fringe for corporations, the sort of research that, if they were left to their own devices, they would not normally do because it is either considered to be too wacky, too speculative, too risky - it's the five- to 10-year horizon," he said.

Increasingly, the cost of doing in-house research is going up, according to Mr Burger. Companies are being forced to be more competitive, with the result that research is actually turning out to be advanced product development and increasingly linked to the companies' bottom line, he said, adding that pure research is retreating more and more into the realm of universities.

"So the role of media lab is a bridge between the wacky and creative thinking that goes on in an unfettered organisation, unfettered on how immediately commercially relevant it is and in what corporations still consider to be interesting developments and therefore will sponsor," said Mr Burger.

The lab will also act as a magnet for corporations worldwide, some of whom are likely to invest in the State, according to Mr Burger.

"Potentially, we have 180 sponsors physically coming into the digital hub two, three or four times a year. And they're not going to stop at MLE. They're going to want to know what else is going on in the digital hub. So it is a huge win for the country," he said.

As the centrepiece of a planned multimedia village of cutting-edge enterprises, it will bring together leading technologists, researchers, new media artists and students to conduct research. In the US, the media lab has 28 faculty members, each of which runs their own research project.

"They are the nucleus in the centre of these co-existing research projects that are going on under the umbrella of media lab. So we expect a similar model and we are actively recruiting now for researchers, and it is hoped that we will have somewhere around half-a-dozen by the end of this year," said Mr Burger.

The type of people hired will be key to the success of the project, he added.

"I am admitting them on the level of energy and enthusiasm that they bring to the project and their ability to take risks," he said. "We are looking for people that have a vision and are not afraid to think unconventionally."

The lab will draw about 50 per cent of its 200 post- and under-graduate students from Ireland, together with many of its instructors, some of whom will be involved on a part-time basis.

However, attracting the right people could prove to be the biggest hurdle for the new lab, according to Mr Burger.

"The success of MLE is wholly dependent on our ability to attract and recruit world-class researchers and thinkers. What could stand in the way of our ability to do that? The obvious thing is infrastructure. MLE is slap bang in the middle of Dublin, which is becoming an expensive place to live and time-consuming to get to.

"For that reason, we're looking to create a campus environment, which will include research facilities, residential quarters and enterprise activities," he said.