Address by Minister Micheál Martin to the Intel Education Seminar, Committee of the Regions, Brussels

Intel Education SeminarCommittee of the Regions, Brussels

Why Knowledge Matters to Ireland

The dramatic nature of Ireland’s economic development has now been subject to many detailed studies. A country which twenty years ago experienced widespread emigration, nearly 20% unemployment and the highest public debt per capita in the world, has been transformed. The roles played by fiscal reform, pro-enterprise tax policies, social partnership and constructive membership of the European Union are widely appreciated. What is often less commented upon has been the dramatic increase in levels of educational achievement which have taken place in the last thirty years. It was only in the late 1960s that free second-level education was introduced for all and a sustained increase in the number and diversity of third-level places was begun.

We have moved from having one of Europe’s lowest levels of educational attainment to a place near the top for those aged below 40. In the last nine years alone there has been an increase of 30% in the number of 3^rd-level graduates – this has been accompanied by new quality improvement measures to ensure that increased participation does not mean reduced standards.

There is simply no way that even a small part of Ireland’s economic success could have been achieved without this increase in our human capital. I understand that many people feel that ‘human capital’ is a cold term, but it has a profoundly humane dimension to it. The best way that I can explain this in an Irish context is to show how it had an impact in my own community.

The Fall and Rise of an Irish City

Every Irish minister is also a parliamentary representative of a particular community. I have the honour of representing one half of Ireland’s second-largest city, Cork. The industrial history of my home city is one of dramatic swings in fortune.

When Henry Ford decided to set up his first plant in Europe he chose Cork as the location. For almost five decades the people of Cork drew great pride and reassurance from the presence in the city of one of the world’s leading brand names, together with a number of others. However, this didn’t last. The closure of the Ford factory was a deeply traumatic part of what was the effective collapse of our industrial base in the 1980s. When I first stood for election there was simply no question as to what the dominant issue was – it was mass employment.

Today Cork’s unemployment rate stands at 3.7%, with the proportion of this made up by young people or the long-term jobless continuing to fall. Cork is an international centre for companies working in modern industries such as pharmaceuticals, data storage, pc systems, software development, shared-services and multi-lingual technical support. Together with major international companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Boston Scientific, Amazon and Apple, we have a rising number of Irish-owned firms which are becoming increasingly important.

The right national policies were vital to this turnaround – but equally it could not have happened without Cork’s educational infrastructure. In addition to a very strong and diverse school system, we have our university and our Institute of Technology. As their many successes in funding competitions have shown, they are high quality and highly responsive. Any knowledge-based firm establishing in Cork knows that its third-level institutions are producing good graduates and are willing to work constructively with business. Critically, they are continuing to expand their research bases.

Building Cork’s knowledge base got us to where we are today – now the challenge for Cork and Ireland as a whole is to go further. Our universities are taking a lead role in meeting this challenge.

Knowledge Policies and Ireland

The Irish government fully understands that the surest way to destroy our recent success is to be complacent about it. Throughout out country we have seen cases such as that of Cork which have taught us that a failure to think of the future meant that it caught up with us. We believe that a sustained programme of investment in and support of research is an absolutely essential part of making sure that we can be successful not just today but also in the years ahead.

This is why we have set the national strategic objective of moving from being an investment driven economy to an innovation and knowledge-driven economy. We believe we must move from exploiting the innovation of others to also becoming a dynamic location for the generation of ideas. In order to achieve this we have been implementing a range of initiatives which are relevant to today’s discussion.

Ireland’s Research Policies & the Universities

Ireland has come a long way in terms of research policies in a very short time. It is a remarkable fact that as recently as 1997 the education ministry had a total dedicated research funding of exactly zero. This barren landscape has been transformed since then. I have had the privilege of serving in a succession of ministries where I have been able to play a leading role in our research agenda. In addition to a number of policies which are solely for industry, and are deepening our engagement with major firms such as Intel, the universities have at all times been at the core of this agenda.

Under the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions, there has been a general investment in research facilities linked to the strategic plans of each university. The objective of this programme has been to create a broad research infrastructure as well as to create a number of new research centres which could later be built upon. Over €100 million in private donations were secured in addition to the much larger public investment. In a first for our system, the government took the decision to completely remove itself from the awards process. Every cent allocated was done on the basis of panels of highly eminent international scholars and administrators evaluating the proposals on a peer-reviewed basis.

As I was Minister for Education & Science at that time, I have been asked frequently why I was willing to recommend to government that our discretion in funding decisions be removed. The answer is very simple – excellence is the only justifiable measure for research funding decisions. We needed to break a tradition of golden circles and privileged facilities which directly worked against building sustainable and world-class programmes. In addition to this expert and fully external to the system awarding process, follow-up reviews have also been expert and external. I am pleased to be able to say that these reviews have been highly positive.

With this developing infrastructural base, we were then in a position to introduce other funding programmes, including specific topic-based research councils. In addition, we decided that we needed to place a particular emphasis on areas of strategic national importance and therefore established Science Foundation Ireland.

SFI

SFI is charged with funding research activity in the core areas of ICTs and biotechnology where we believe we need to achieve a critical mass of research excellence. In particular, we see this as helping us to support existing and potential industrial activity.

SFI’s funding is allocated on the basis of international peer review procedures. It requires that all research proposals meet the highest international standards. Together with the research Councils, SFI has demonstrated that there was a huge amount of talent in our universities waiting to be given a chance to shine. On top of this, there has been major progress in supporting new Principal Investigators and, in the last five years, 40 PIs based throughout the world have relocated to Irish universities as a result of SFI grants.

A direct and active cooperation with industry is a requirement of a major collaborative initiative which is being funded through SFI. These are our Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSETs), of which there are seven to date. These centres, all of which are based in universities, fund researchers to collaborate with industry in developing internationally competitive research clusters. Among the technologies being addressed are: Nanotechnology, Software Engineering, Telecommunications Value Chain, Semantic Web, Regenerative Medicine, Alimentary Pharmabiotics and Biomedical Diagnostics. The major industrial partners include, Intel, Hewlett Packard, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, Charles River Labs and Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs.

In addition to passing through a process of international review of the proposed research programmes, the centres have to demonstrate that they will benefit industry, that they will work collaboratively within the entire university system and that they will have a direct impact on the quality of training within the system.

Each centre is based on a University campus and they thus form a major a major focus of University/industry interaction. In addition, they all have a strong outreach function aimed at promoting science awareness among young people. Given the widespread “pipeline” problem in regard to new entrants to science courses it is vital that universities develop linkages back into the second level education system. In Ireland, such linkages are being supported by SFI through an innovative initiative which supports secondary school science teachers to work during their summer break in university labs and to see the cutting edge of scientific research at first hand. The linkages thus forged have resulted in continuing relationships between the research labs and the secondary schools involved.

Moving Forward

These and the other developments which I have mentioned show that a lot has been happening in Ireland in order to turn the objective of building a knowledge economy into reality. However we see this as only a beginning. We now need to significantly accelerate action and this is what we propose to do. This involves major state funding, a new approach to overseeing the research infrastructure and substantial support for reform and development within our universities.

Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation

Earlier this year we set out in detail our Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation from now until 2013. We have set a very clear overall target:

Ireland by 2013 will be internationally renowned for the excellence of its research, be at the forefront in generating and using new knowledge for economic and social progress, within an innovation driven culture

This Strategy is based on the core principle that we will significantly grow our world-class research capabilities. This will be reflected in numbers of researchers, levels of spending, support for knowledge transfer, the development of new sectoral programmes and a full range of other initiatives. The strategy of course also deals with commercialisation and industrial R&D.

We are committed to delivering significant increases in research capacity, quality and output. This requires increased levels of investment in our universities. Further world-class research teams will be built and the output of our PhDs will be doubled. As part of this, we will remove obstacles to the mobility of researchers. This, when coupled with attractive funding opportunities, will make Ireland highly competitive in the international talent stakes.

The overall cost of this Strategy is €3.8 billion and we have already seen concrete benefits come from it in terms of industrial partnerships and new research teams.

Oversight

Many parts of government have a strategic interest in research. For example, health and agriculture are sectors where research is fundamental to their future and it would be bad policy to remove all research funding from their control. Equally you have to avoid waste and ensure that consistent standards are applied. This is why we have decided to implement an entirely new approach to how we oversee the research infrastructure.

Our principle is to take a whole-of-government approach. Led by a Cabinet Committee which I chair and which the Taoiseach is a member of, we are ensuring that principles of competitive awards, international standards and ongoing review are implemented. In addition, we have retained the flexibility to move funding between programmes on the basis of where the greatest impact is being felt.

University Reform

Universities throughout Europe are struggling to meet modern demands while protecting their academic traditions. I believe Ireland is very lucky in having universities that understand the basic lesson that the most valuable traditions are those that are a foundation not a fence. Particular academic structures are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. In return for a major increase in public funding, including the opening up of new career possibilities for researchers, it is absolutely reasonable to expect universities to seek ways of reforming their work.

Times of great change can bring with them fears and uncertainty – and academics are no exception to this. I think we should fight any attempt to reduce the debate on reform to a crude and false one of commercialism versus academic freedom. I believe that academic independence can, in fact, be enhanced by structures which reward excellence in research.

Equally, there is no conflict between a research agenda and a teaching agenda, they are absolutely inseparable. The best undergraduate courses are those which are renewed to reflect the expanding frontiers of knowledge and are integrated within institutions which expect staff to be research active.

I think it is also worth noting that there is nothing in supporting research in the sciences which implies or requires a downgrading of the arts and humanities. A balanced society and a world-class university system require a diverse and challenging academic culture in the arts and humanities. We recognised this when the first research council we established in 1999 was in just this area. In addition, dedicated funding for the arts and humanities has been provided in the context of the Strategy I have mentioned.

I believe that our universities are rising to the challenge of new opportunities and are eager to develop. For example, proposals for the formation of graduate schools which will support more widely skilled PhDs and reduce completion times are being prepared. It would not be possible or desirable to attempt to completely alter the university funding system, but it is important that positive innovation is recognised. On top of the use of competitive programmes for research funding, the government has launched a Strategic Innovation Fund for universities. Worth over €300 million this will be allocated to universities on the basis of the strategic planning and reform programmes.

Ireland is a small country and 130,000 is still a relatively small third-level base – therefore we have to encourage collaborations. Funding programmes have been designed to support this, and also to encourage deeper international collaborations. It is our intention to shortly announce some practical measures in this area.

The Universities and Europe’s Knowledge Challenge

There is no doubt that broader and deeper collaboration between Europe’s universities is required if we are to meet the challenges set in the Lisbon Strategy. There have been major successes in encouraging some joint projects and encouraging more systematic networking, but this only represents a good start. A core objective must be that we avoid any pull towards a low common denominator. We must insist on genuine competition and world-class standards in everything we fund. We must avoid the error of believing that everything called research or involving cooperation is automatically good.

By setting the funding bar at a high level, and avoiding an approach which is to prescriptive, we will be inviting Europe’s academics to release their own potential. After decades where funding was small and declining, there is a serious and growing commitment to pushing this area.

For all of us who participate in administering research funding the challenge is to be flexible enough to allow organic growth within the broad context of our strategic goals. We have to be responsive and to understand that we cannot treat knowledge generation as just another programme subject to the rules which we apply in other policy areas. We do not have the luxury of getting this wrong, because the cost of being of missing out on new industries is only going to increase.

If we look back at the transformation of Europe in the almost fifty years since the signing of the Treaty of Rome, we see an economic and social landscape which was built in large part through a respect for the position of learning in our societies. Universities evolved dramatically to a stage where university education has moved from being highly elite to allowing mass participation. The longest period of growth and prosperity in the history of Europe could not have been possible without this.

As we look forward, the importance of our universities is likely to actually increase. If we are to benefit from the many advantages of globalisation, and to secure a level of social provision which we aspire to, then investing in knowledge is not an option. If public policy steps up with the right combination of increased funding, high standards and a reform of administration then I have no doubt that Europe’s universities can meet the challenges set for them.

Ends

ETE 1640