Science Week: Young people should take up science given its importance to the Irish economy, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, said yesterday when she launched Science Week Ireland.
"Ireland's economic growth will come from productivity which will be very much fuelled by innovation," Ms Harney said.
Science Week Ireland will run from November 9th-16th and include 250 events at venues across the State.
It was created to combat the decrease in interest in the sciences among secondary students, and this year is the flagship event of the newly-formed Discover Science and Engineering Programme.
At the launch, Ms Lisa Burke, the "weather girl" from Sky News, spoke about her unconventional science career. She has a Cambridge degree in natural science but gave up a doctorate opportunity to work for the news channel.
Both Ms Harney and Ms Burke encouraged the audience, made up in large part by third year science students from Wesley College, to stick with science studies.
"If you leave science at 16, you will never return to it. I can almost guarantee it," Ms Burke told the students. She said most other interests can be pursued later in life, such as art or music, but "you can't just pick up science".
Ms Harney said science degrees open the door to many career opportunities, which may or may not end up being in the science field.
Ms Burke especially encouraged young women in the audience.
"If you're a woman and even vaguely good at science, you stand out. There's positive discrimination in that way."
Wesley student Maeve Galvin (14) said she likes science because of the experiments. "You're learning without realising it. You look at all the normal day to day things and find out how they work."
Classmate Jessica Byrne (14) said science gets a bad reputation because people tend to focus on the technical side.
"When everyone talks about science, it's about velocity and speed and you don't think about how you need science in real life. When you think about that, it gets really interesting," she said.
After the launch, comedian David O'Doherty entertained the students with his science mishaps. He now has a regular slot on the new science series Scope on RTÉ's Network 2.
Mr O'Doherty said his new job with Scope, where he profiles famous Irish scientists and their discoveries, has made him look at science in a new way.
"These scientists looked at problems and came up with creative ways of getting around them. That's a way I'd never thought about science before. It's not just a big long list of definitions."