Irish universities are concerned about the Government's inconsistent approach to research funding, reports Dick Ahlstrom.
State support for research is of "national strategic importance" yet it remains fragmented and disjointed. It suggests a policy vacuum that could damage our long-term economic prospects, according to the chair of the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities (CHIU).
CHIU has lobbied vigorously on behalf of third-level researchers, seeking Government support for a sustained and predictable approach to State backing for research. It has been uphill going according to Prof Seamus Smyth, current head of CHIU and president of NUI Maynooth.
"In fairness, the Government over the last five or six years has finally recognised the need for investment in research at third level, but it really is a matter of a lot done, more to do," Smyth states.
"The last few years have really been catching up on the deficits of the 1980s and 1990s. Now we have a recent change to a "stop-go" on research investment. The stop-go message coming out is a problem."
Smyth's reference is to the decision to "pause", for an as yet unspecified period, capital spending under the €630 million Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions funding initiative. Operated by the Higher Education Authority on behalf of the Department of Education and Science, the pause has caused problems for those who had been promised money for 2003 and has also broadcast to Irish and other researchers abroad, doubts about the Government's commitment to research.
"We have sent a sharp, shuddering message to that community by shutting off the capital side of the PRTLI," says Smyth. "A scientist in Boston knows very well what conditions are like in Ireland and what their career prospects are."
The Government is putting €2,540 million into scientific research under the National Development Plan up to 2006, the stated goal being a shift towards a knowledge-based economy. Yet the pause in the PRTLI and a significant row-back in funding for the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology which funds projects and student research at third level is sending a very mixed message to the local and international research community.
"There is a disjointedness in the funding," Smyth believes, a "disconnectedness" that will harm the overall NDP initiative. "What we are now getting is a fragmenting of some of the components of the ecology of research here. This will leave us with a diminution in the impact this investment should make."
CHIU is not just calling for more money to solve the problem. "Nobody is saying that the Government should just throw money at this." It is about having a coherent policy for research, he says - investment without policy is a waste of money. "In the run-up to 2006 they have to reunite the system. It is of national strategic importance."
Departments such as Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Communications, Marine and Natural Resources; Education and Science; Health and Children; Agriculture and others with research budgets (even the Department of Justice, which can issue visas to researchers) have to pull in the same direction.
"We don't need them to be competing with one another," he says. "All of this has to be seen as part of an integrated plan. We need a single, overarching direction that will co-ordinate these activities. It is vital that we have an integration of activity, but not a consolidation of activity. That is the responsibility of government. That is what government is about."
The lack of movement on the Walsh Report, sent early this year to the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment with recommendations on a unified science policy, is troubling, Smyth says. Among other things it recommends the appointment of a high-level adviser to government on science.
"I think the silence that is surrounding the issue of a chief scientific adviser is symptomatic," says Smyth. "It suggests a policy vacuum. The absence of debate leaves one wondering whether there will be a fudge on the big issue, whether we will create a policy to allow all of the agencies to develop in a coherent way."
Ireland will be the loser if these policies are not put in place, says Smyth. "Human capital in terms of brainpower is one of the most mobile forms of capital. Its loss is just a plane ticket away. That is what will happen if we keep this stop-go, incoherent policy on research."