A senior government education adviser has warned of a graduate "brain drain" to the greater Dublin area caused by the lack of educational, research and employment opportunities elsewhere.
The director of Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dr Sean McDonagh, who also heads the Department of Education task force on the supply of technicians, came to this conclusion after studying the Higher Education Authority's 1997 survey tracking the destinations of Irish graduates.
By dividing the regional graduate employment by the regional population, he constructs an index to compare regional graduate employment rates.
This shows that in 1997 the rate of new graduate employment in the eastern sub-region - the greater Dublin area which also takes in Kildare, Meath and Wicklow - was twice the rate in the Galway-Mayo sub-region, almost four times that of the midlands, and seven times the rate in the north-east.
Dr McDonagh finds that the HEA's annual surveys reveal "a three-tier Ireland": the first tier, the greater Dublin sub-region; the second, the west, south-west and mid-west, which contain the cities areas of Galway, Cork and Limerick; and the third tier the other four sub-regions, the south-east, the midlands, the north-west and the north-east.
The two Border sub-regions - covering Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth - have "the lowest capacity by far (per head) to employ graduates."
When Dr McDonagh breaks the HEA survey results down by subject studied, the regional contrasts are equally marked.
The rate of employment of those with primary degrees in business studies in the greater Dublin sub-region is seven times that of the "third tier" sub-regions.
Of the holders of postgraduate qualifications in business studies, 85 per cent were employed in the greater Dublin sub-region, with just over 2 per cent in the "third tier" sub-regions. The greater Dublin sub-region employed new science graduates and postgraduates at five times the rate of the "third tier" sub-regions.
Dr McDonagh says the HEA surveys show that "far from being self-righting, knowledge/technology activities have the characteristic that the rich get richer and the poorer regions suffer a `brain drain.'
"The less well-performing regions `subsidise' the better-performing regions. Major resourced and sustained interventions are required to reverse these trends."
He notes that three of the "third tier" sub-regions - the north-west, the north-east and the midlands - are included in the region being proposed by the Government for Objective 1 status for distributing EU funds.
He urges the State development agencies to encourage "nuclei of science /technology/knowledge-based activity" in towns with institutes of technology such as Waterford, Sligo, Athlone, Dundalk, Letterkenny and Carlow.
He also wants universities, in collaboration with technology institutes, to take responsibility for regional "research/development, inward investment and the internal generation of knowledge-based wealth."
He says the "extremely poor performance of the six Border counties in graduate employment surveys suggests a major cross-Border initiative in knowledge-based activity focused on Drogheda-Dundalk-Newry, Letterkenny-Derry and Sligo-Enniskillen."