Exploding the myths about Media Lab

Karlin Lillington Net Results: You could predict it, just as you know it will come round any time a company fails in this country - Ireland's begrudgery culture.

The closure last Friday of Dublin's Media Lab Europe (MLE), spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, brought out the gloaters, the I-told-you-so's, the schadenfreude specialists who love nothing better than an economic car crash.

And then we wonder why we do such a prissy little job of trying to stand out in the international technology market. With a handful of exceptions that are so rare they only prove the rule, this is (to appropriate Yeats) still no country for young (or old) entrepreneurs, researchers and innovators.

Oh, it isn't that we aren't successful, in a certain, tax-friendly, unchallenging kind of way. Bring us your software CDs (code written elsewhere) to shrinkwrap and ship, your products (invented elsewhere) needing localisation, your huddled masses for your international call centre, and yes, we will shower you with low taxes, advice in setting up, access to senior politicians, and other sweeteners.

But the fact is Irish companies have barely made a dent in the US market. And we seem incapable of either thinking large or long-term. (This is beginning to change with the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and significant funding into research and development in general.)

The whole MLE drama underlines some of the reasons why. We think small and local, not big and international. And we hate anyone else's potential success so much that we nourish our little micro-hatreds. We can badmouth in our sleep.

All the chestnuts that were circulated when MLE was set up have been brought out and passed around again by everyone from international broadsheet journalists to RTÉ news commentators. What is it about this country that we love a negative story so much that no one verifies any facts?

First: MLE did not get a huge amount of funding when Irish R&D got nothing. The very proposal to set up MLE here meant the Government had to immediately acknowledge that funding overall must be upped to international standards - and hence, SFI was directly born out of the same overall project. No funds that should have gone to "some other project" went to MLE. Instead, funding was created for MLE while considerably more went (and continues to go) into the SFI and general R&D budget.

Second: MLE was not "shopped around Europe" to end up here when no one else would take it. MLE (or rather, its negotiators) went to talk to other countries when it looked like the Government could not make up its mind. Ireland was approached initially because of some strong MIT connections here and a feeling - not yet proven - that Ireland was beneficially closer to Boston than Berlin when it came to new attitudes to research.

The other European discussions ultimately went nowhere for some of the same reasons that Europe has an appallingly weak record on the R&D front. Europe in general is mired in levels of bureaucracy and intra-national rivalries that guarantee Europe has never been seen as a pro-research environment.

Guess where most European researchers go? Yep, the US. Even if MLE had been rejected by other European nations, one might - if one knows anything at all about the international research scene - see that as to its credit.

Three: the Irish taxpayer did not lose €30 million on MLE. More than two-thirds of that cash went into buying and renovating the empty shell of the old Guinness Hopstore property - which still belongs to the Government, is now of very high specification, and will quickly find other uses, probably as whatever research development goes into the Digital Hub. Imagine trying to buy it now, five years later in an even more costly land market, and it might even be seen as a bargain at the price.

Four: If one still argues that €8 million was "lost", then ask the IDA to put a figure on the uplift MLE brought to new technology investment.

At a point when we were increasingly being recognised as the broadband black hole of Europe, having an MIT-affiliated research lab here gave the State international profile. Just look at the companies that based here during the global downturn.

And Five: put a price on the research experience gained by many Irish postgrad and undergrad students - who now can very easily find work, yes, in top US research facilities.

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