New RIA head points to ethos of public service

The Royal Irish Academy is a "human resource" that has great potential to do good for the island of Ireland. And at 220 years of age it is as vibrant and vigorous as ever as it continues a modernisation of its activities.

Its new president, former head of experimental physics at NUI Maynooth Jim Slevin, plans to tap into that potential and help people realise just how valuable a national asset the Academy is. Far from being a venerable gentlemen scholars' club, it has a vital role to play in modern Irish society and Slevin wants the public and the Government to realise this.

"It is an influential body," he says of the Academy. "It is an enormous privilege and honour to be the president of such an organisation."

The Academy promotes research and scholarship in the humanities and the sciences and is an all Ireland body. It was founded in 1785, says Slevin, "long before there was a Good Friday Agreement or cross-Border institutions" and it pursues its role on the island as a whole.

The Department of Education and Science funds the Academy via a grant from the Higher Education Authority. It is a modest organisation compared say to the US National Academy of Sciences, which employs 1,000 people and produced 250 reports a year using a mix of public and private funding. At any one time the US body might have 100 expert groups sitting, says Slevin.

The Academy has 330 members and another 300 sitting on its 20 committees with a full time staff of about 35 and a similar number of part timers. This, says Slevin, represents a "huge human resource", adding, "There is undeveloped potential to use this resource to bring some light to bear on important social issues."

The Academy was established to promote scholarship in the humanities and the sciences but the modernisation of its role means it also has other work to do, he believes. "We are trying to make the Academy more relevant to the needs of scholarship but also of Ireland itself. We want to continue to develop our ethos of public service."

It already does this in a variety of ways, he states. "We facilitate debate and dialogue between people who are concerned about research and scholarship." It organises meetings to discuss issues of importance to the State, for example infrastructural deficiencies in the universities, the risks posed by the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria and how Ireland might develop its hoped-for knowledge-based economy.

Slevin has been directly involved in helping these and other meetings come to pass. He was also instrumental in setting up the Academy's Irish Council for Bioethics and its Hamilton scholarship programme. All of these activities represent an attempt by the Academy to promote the public good. "Our role as a facilitator is extremely important," he believes.

The Academy also funds research directly, for example the original Clare Island Survey a century ago and the new survey, and publishes a wide range of scholarly works via its proceedings. It organises an ongoing lecture series with this newspaper and a wider lecture programme with funding from Depfa Bank Plc. "The number of activities run by the Academy has doubled over the last year," says Slevin.

He believes that developing more corporate support from companies like Depfa would allow the Academy to do even more in support of Ireland. "If we had more private funding it might allow us to develop a greater level of independence in certain areas," he believes.

Raising corporate finance is a difficult task he admits, but he has set a goal of €1 million a year before his three-year tenure as president ends. While the Academy needs its public support to help it do its job, private funding would allow a broadening of services.

Slevin retired several years ago from his position at NUI Maynooth, but he is working harder than ever at the Academy, as science secretary, then secretary and now president. "Effectively I am working full-time here," he says.

He receives no pay or expenses for this commitment however. "It is pro bono," he says, but Slevin admits to one perk of the job. "I get fed."