The recent publication of Government papers relating to MediaLabEurope has given me occasion (from my admittedly interested position as a board member of that body and as adviser to the Irish side on the project) to think about two issues of wider national importance - our experience with freedom of information, and our attitude to risk.
The Freedom of Information Act was a milestone in Irish democracy which swept away the veils of secrecy shrouding the lead-up to government decisions. For the first time the ordinary citizen (largely thanks to the press) can be a fly on the bureaucratic wall.
But it is clearly taking us some time to come to grips with the new phenomenon. At first, no doubt, it was shocking to some that behind an apparently monolithic facade of Government policy was lurking a cesspool of pros and cons. To a generation used to decisions handed down as tablets of stone, it has sometimes proved uncomfortable to realise that many - if not most - decisions are judgment calls, arrived at after careful balancing of arguments for and against.
In time, hopefully, this initial shocked reaction should yield to a more realistic view of how policy is made. The unveiling to public view of the cons against a decision should ideally be a way towards deepening awareness of the issues at stake.
But instead there has been a tendency to regard the revelation of any arguments against a decision as prima-facie evidence that the decision was faulty - or even somehow improper. This tendency gains momentum if the released documents are quoted from selectively, as the exigencies of media coverage often demand, rather than reported in full.
An equal danger lies in the handling of "differences" between civil servants and their political masters. Firstly, these differences can be created out of nothing - as when only the cons of a balanced position paper are focused on. But even in those (relatively few) cases where a minister makes a decision against the thrust of official advice, it is surely wrong to assume that the minister's action was questionable simply because he did not accept that advice.
If we assume that a minister is prima facie wrong when he refuses to accept official advice, it is hard to see why we have ministers at all. We do not have a system of government in which the function of ministers is to carry out the policies of civil servants. Neither, as the instance of MediaLabEurope should remind us, do we have a system of government in which the role of the Taoiseach is merely to pass judgment on proposals coming from ministers.
With MediaLabEurope, what the papers reveal is a fascinating insight into bureaucratic infighting, with each player strenuously defending his turf and approaching the central proposal with generous doses of "not invented here" and quick flashes of the green card.
It is in the nature of the beast for any university to want for itself anything that is going. It is in the nature of the beast for the Department of Education to be less than enthusiastic about ideas that do not emanate from within itself. It is in the nature of any Irish beast to favour a national rather than an international involvement, even with what is certainly one of the leading 10 universities worldwide.
It is important we develop a more nuanced reaction to Freedom of Information revelations, because if we don't it will surely bring an undesirable mutation in the information that is revealed. If Government finds itself being constantly second-guessed, it will eventually ensure that the record to be revealed is clean and pristine. Less and less will get committed to paper, a development that is unlikely to make for better government.
Another area where we need to develop our views is in the national attitude to risk. Again, our traditions have made us riskaverse; in the new world, we have some repositioning to do.
All investments involve risk, but that does not make them "gambles". All investment in research projects involves stepping into the unknown; where you have uncertainty you have also the possibility of failure. While we must be prudent about reducing risk whenever possible, we should remember the only way to eliminate it altogether is by eliminating uncertainty. In research, that means doing literally nothing.
We should also be slow to put civil servants (and indeed politicians) in the firing line for taking risks. Conventional wisdom has long demanded a public service that is more entrepreneurial, more innovative. If we slap down the public service every time it innovates, we will discourage such behaviour in the future. Ministers will receive only analyses of issues that are driven by the need to be "safe" rather than to be right.
Let us accept that risk-taking has a place in the public sector, and make our judgments from that starting point. If we were betting the ranch on our investing in MediaLabEurope, I would be the first to object. The reality is that we have committed 2 per cent of our planned provision for research and development to this leading-edge project, which has the prospect of laying foundations for our continued prosperity.
In my view, that is an eminently reasonable risk. Of course it may fail, but even if it does we should not reproach ourselves for having had the vision to inch forward into the waters of uncertainty.
Daniel O'Hare is a former president of Dublin City University