A chara, – In addition to relying on foreign direct investment for our future welfare perhaps we should have a fresh look at building new indigenous businesses. Start-ups with five to 10 people are generally geared to producing €1m to €5m worth of sales. This is not a basis for winning in global markets. By creating new R&D projects, each requiring more than €100 million investment, strong offerings could be developed and annual sales of several hundred millions achieved with the winners.
The existing research structures are unsuitable to produce the necessary results because of their limited agendas. The universities are concerned about their league table positions and therefore rely on academics to produce papers to improve their fortunes. The post-docs are cheap labour in these paper mills of academia. Science Foundation Ireland shells out €300 million per year, of which only 10 per cent is for applied research, to support research projects that go mainly nowhere. Another €200 million is routed through Enterprise Ireland to keep postgrads off the dole and to further the paper production. There are some successes and these get sold off as quickly as possible.
Fifty per cent of the academic gravy could be diverted to pay for separate R&D centres where large projects could be worked on. Paper publishing would have a low priority. Typically about 50 people might be needed per project. The leadership should be from people with ability. They could be augmented by hiring the best postgrads and by sub-contracting to the universities and to domestic industry. In this way we could compete with our European partners and ultimately reduce the dependency on Uncle Sam. – Is mise,