Racist attitudes are affecting our ability to attract good scientists here, when a diverse society is needed to boost creativity, writes Cormac Sheridan.
Issues such as immigration, ethnic diversity and multiculturalism are entirely absent from the science policy debate in this country. We are not alone in that. They are generally excluded from most conventional models of competitiveness, according to Richard Florida author of the influential book The Rise of the Creative Class.
He and others argue that the cities and regions that will thrive in the 21st century will be those that can attract and mobilise "creative capital" - the talented individuals who, collectively, give locations a competitive edge. Governments across the globe, including ours, are trying to tap into this highly mobile talent pool of scientists, researchers and designers whom they hope will underpin future economic growth.
Achieving an environment that attracts talented people is important given the report published in September by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs. It indicated that Ireland will need to attract another 6,800 researchers by the end of the decade to reach a target research spending level of 2.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
The report of the Enterprise Strategy Group also referred to the importance of immigrants, "particularly those with higher-level qualifications", in supporting enterprise development.
However the absence of political leadership on tackling racism, combined with the Government's widely criticised approach to immigration policy, have created a difficult climate for some overseas scientists already living and working here.
Dipak Patel, on extended leave from British Telecom and currently carrying out PhD research at Media Lab Europe, can reel off a string of anecdotes about racist behaviour among the public and about the unthinking racism of many Irish people in social situations.
"A lot of Irish people don't understand the concept of being English and non-white," he says. Born in Wolverhampton to Indian parents, Patel recalls one woman who met him for the first time asking if he was going to have an arranged marriage. "I looked at her and said, 'well, if you're offering'."
Katherine Moriwaki, a PhD research student and member of the network and telecommunications research group in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin is highly enthusiastic about the working environment she has encountered. "It's the environment outside of the university, that's been really difficult. It's been very, very hard to actually enjoy living here."
Moriwaki, a fourth generation Japanese-American from California, says both overt racism and invasive questioning from well-intentioned people are a "regular, integrated part" of her experience of living here. "There are retrograde people in the United States who still think that they can identify people based on their physical appearance, but race, nationality, ethnicity, those are decoupled things in the contemporary US. They are, still, in Ireland very tightly coupled."
There are also tensions between Ireland's immigration policy and our stated aim of attracting the best international brains. Because of the absence of permanent residency programmes, such as the US's green card system or France's carte de séjour scheme, scientists from third countries (that is, outside the European Economic Area or Switzerland) with permanent full-time positions in Ireland face bureaucratic anomalies and restrictions on travel and other impediments.
Under the 2004 Immigration Act, they are required to register with their local Garda and then report to them annually. The children of academics permanently employed in Irish colleges have to pay full foreign fees - which range from around €10,000 to more than €20,000 annually - if they wish to attend the institution in which a parent is employed during the first three years of their parent's residency.
Anecdotal reports also point to protracted visa delays for overseas scientists taking up fellowships in Ireland. One overseas colleague lost two months from a 12-month programme for this reason, according to Dr Fiona Regan, a lecturer at Dublin City University's School of Chemical Sciences and a former chair of the Irish Research Scientists Association.
"We are totally delighted that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has supported research to such an extent, but when we see eminent scientists having such problems coming to Ireland we think there should be better communication between departments," she says.
The clash between the two policy agendas is part of a wider crisis about the nature of Ireland's development, according to Dr Gerry Boucher at the Employment Research Centre in TCD's department of sociology. "This is a conflict between Ireland becoming a global society in terms of the economy and a global society in terms of the society itself." Boucher is author of The Irish are friendly but..., a study on racism and international students published in 1998 by the Irish Council for International Students (ICOS). None of its recommendations was ever incorporated into national policy, he says, although individual institutions may have implemented some of them under their own initiative.
Patel and Moriwaki are representative of Richard Florida's "creative class" concept. If Ireland is not the kind of place where either can live easily, ultimately it will be Ireland's loss, not theirs.
* The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida, Pluto Press