Madam, – Anglo Irish bank, AIB and Bank of Ireland can lose millions by sheer reckless greed and hold the State to ransom. Yet their senior executives are probably breezily planning their golfing mini-break as I type this letter.
However, a woman in Co Monaghan had to fight tooth and nail to her assert her right to liberty after being jailed for defaulting on her €82-a-week repayments to a credit union (“Woman jailed over credit union debt wins action”, June 19th). A loan which partially funded her daughter’s funeral. I don’t think witty or clever comments are required to illustrate this shocking state of affairs further. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Attending a recent Intellectual Property (IP) seminar in London I was intrigued by a number of the speakers who provided advice to private sector companies and governments alike on the best way to emerge from the current financial crisis as stronger and more prosperous entities.
It was convincingly demonstrated that investment in IP and research and development during recessions has historically paid dividends. In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the International Radio Corporation invested significant funds in the development of an emerging technology known as television, a venture I hasten to add that at the time was considered quite risky.
Also during this period such multinational corporations as Baxter Pharmaceuticals and Hewlett Packard were conceived. During the entire 20th century companies emerging successfully from recessions were found to have invested 22 per cent more in RD than their unsuccessful peers.
At a legislative level, investment in RD by the Chinese government has increased exponentially over the past decade, a trend that is set to continue, such that by 2020 China will have increased investment in RD by 440 per cent, amounting to 2.5 per cent of GDP. The net result of this investment will transform China’s core manufacturing industry into the world’s largest knowledge-based economy. In the US, President Obama has increased the funding to the National Institutes of Health by a further $6.5 billion.
In contrast, in Ireland, despite our Government’s supposed commitment to the establishment of a knowledge-based economy, one of the largest public grant-awarding authorities, Science Foundation Ireland, has been forced to significantly cut back on its investment in RD in 2009 and subsequent years.
We ignore the lessons of previous recessions at our peril and a failure to invest now will inevitably result in Ireland playing catch-up (again!) once the recession has past. I urge Mr Cowen to make the hard decision and invest in RD and the consequent future prosperity of this country. – Yours, etc,