The Government plans to invest in a revolutionary research programme in science and engineering which will cost £560 million over the next seven years, the most significant investment ever in science and technology.
The new programme is based on the Technology Foresight Report of the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, and the recommendations of the Office of Science and Technology and the Minister of State, Mr Noel Treacy. The decision by the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, to set up this programme will rank in importance with the historic decisions to invest in education taken in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ms Harney's new programme will "establish world-class research capability in certain key technologies in order to underpin future industrial competitiveness".
I want to emphasise the main challenge for Ireland. Because of gross under-funding there are few world-class Irish research groups. We must set up a system which will properly support those scientists already in Ireland. But we will also have to attract to Ireland outstanding scientists who have left, and indeed world-class scientists who are not Irish.
The key point is that we will not attract scientists from abroad (nor will we do justice to excellent scientists who already work here) unless the programme is organised according to best international practice, namely that of the United States, which has dominated international science and engineering in the 20th century.
The basis of the US system is a dynamic partnership between government, the leading universities and the private sector. US programmes fund high-quality inquiries into fundamentally interesting science within broad fields, the results to be put in the public domain for commercial development.
Competitive peer-reviewed federal programmes are run, for example, by the National Science Foundation, where the government acts as paymaster at arm's length. The top universities play their role by employing the best scientists they can find (often from abroad), providing them with facilities to teach and research, where they can attract the most brilliant postgraduate students possible, who help to staff the research projects.
The universities expect their scientists to win research grants through proposals to the federal agencies. These proposals are judged and ranked by scientific peers and the best ones funded usually for three to five years. A project leader assembles a team of five to 10 people, some experienced scientists with PhDs and research students who will work on the project for their PhDs.
Each research project is monitored and stringently assessed by the federal agency.
Research at the top US universities is a ferociously competitive business, and the livelihood and careers of the university scientists depend entirely on how successful they are in getting federal grants and delivering research results.
University scientists do not get "permanent jobs" at top US universities unless they win major federal research grants while on probation. Nor will they be promoted unless they continue to perform.
Federally funded, competitive, university-based research has two main products: first, knowledge which is published in scientific papers, reports and patents, upon which US industry is based; second, highly educated young scientists and engineers.
The system is continually renewing itself, with the most productive scientists and engineers educating their successors. At the same time, industries compete to employ these exceptionally well-educated and highly-motivated researchers who will commercialise the ideas which emerge from the universities.
The new Irish research programme must recognise the intimate symbiotic relationship between high-level teaching and research, and industry. The US system distils talent, automatically collecting the most talented people into a relatively small number of institutions.
The best-qualified people at each level compete for admission to the best departments in the top universities. This process means that the most brilliant students are naturally apprenticed to the leading scientists and learn to do research in the most challenging situation imaginable.
The US seeks talent internationally: in 1998, PhDs were awarded by US universities to 8,000 foreigners (one-third from mainland China), and many of these graduates will stay in the US and work for US high-tech industry (as do many Irish graduates).
Research grants are awarded to individual scientists and not to institutions, so the system is fluid and adaptable, with federal research money supporting the most productive scientists and the best scientific ideas. The federal research agencies are reluctant to tie money into bricks and mortar or for that matter into "permanent jobs".
In Ireland the Higher Education Authority should be mainly responsible for building research laboratories in fields in which those universities have demonstrated capacity for world-class research.
The Howard Hughes Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, the largest two private medical research foundations in the world, use the same system as the US. The foundation decides which research projects should be funded by policy and peer review, and the universities (or other institutes) provide the basic facilities.
This gives the funding agencies maximum flexibility in deciding what kind of research is to be funded with the minimum amount of long-term commitment.
Such a dynamic system can be set up quickly by international advertisement. It can be given a prominent identity, it will attract world-class scientists and engineers to Ireland and allow the best Irish scientists to put their skills and knowledge fully and appropriately in the service of this country.