A LACK OF Leaving Certificate chemistry can seriously damage your career prospects, according to Professor Declan Burke of UCC.

"The feature that continues to surprise me about chemistry is the low uptake of the subject at Leaving Certificate level. Approximately 50 per cent of candidates take biology, 2 per cent take physics and only about 12.5 per cent take chemistry.

"Yet one of my recent postgraduates has just taken up a position in industry, where - in the first year - she will receive about £40,000 renumeration, plus a free apartment and free use of a car," Burke adds.

Dr Peter Childs, of the Schools Information Centre for the Chemical Industry (SICICI), based in UL, notes that almost every industry employs some chemists. Chemistry graduates can be found in electronics-manufacturing plants, environmental management, the food industry, etc.

However, the mainstay in Ireland is the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industry, he says. The industry employs a high proportion of well-paid graduates; it is expanding, steadily albeit not dramatically and there has been no major closedown of any multinational company in Ireland partly due to the heavy investment in plant, Childs says. There is also a good supply of qualified graduates here.

SICICI's fourth annual jobs survey (which does not claim to be comprehensive) shows that the number of posts advertised has averaged about 300 each year for the past four years. This is reasonably in balance with the number of third-level graduates - in 1994, for instance, there were 308 graduates from four-year honours chemistry programmes, 124 from three-year pass degrees, 104 postgraduates, 232 students with national certificates and 204 students with national diplomas.

When it comes to choosing a third-level course, there is an array of options from pure to applied to analytical chemistry to chemistry with languages. Both DCU and UL have work experience built into their degree programmes. DCU offers three undergraduate chemistry courses: analytical, applied and chemistry with a language.

Professor Malcolm Smyth of DCU says that the analytical course is very successful in terms of jobs. In contrast to the other degree courses, only IS to 20 per cent go on to higher degrees, with the remainder gaining employment directly."

Students of chemistry with languages spend one year abroad during the course - six months at a university and six months in an industrial plant.

Professor Burke of UCC says that, to eater for the high demand for skilled people in the "pharmachem" area, a new course in pharamaceutical chemistry is starting in UCC this autumn. Students enter this course via the standard biological and chemical sciences course, but in third and fourth years they specialise in areas such as medicinal (largely organic) chemistry, biochemistry and pharmacology.

In UL's industrial-chemistry degree, students spend the majority of third and fourth years studying process development. There is a certain amount of overlap with chemical engineering; Padraic Gallagher, careers officer in UL, says some graduates have continued their studies and qualified as chartered engineers.