IRELAND MUST continue to support research and innovation as key priorities for maintaining employment and growth.
More co-operation between industry and the country’s universities is also needed, according to an end-of-year statement from the Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation.
“We must maintain our commitment to science and technology as a central element of our enterprise policy,” the council’s chairman Tom McCarthy said yesterday on the release of the statement entitled Staying the Course.
The council argued for more measures to assist the mobility of Irish researchers wishing to work abroad but also backed efforts to bring in “top-class” researchers.
This could be supported by improving the transfer of pension and social welfare entitlements.
Efforts to “embed employability” in science graduates by providing additional skills were necessary, it added. It also urged the Government to speed up the reform of maths teaching in schools via the Project Maths initiative. Mr McCarthy welcomed Government proposals, announced in September 2010, to spend €2.4 billion on science, technology and innovation over the next six years. He added however, that, “short-term measures will not suffice”.
The council would organise a consultation process in 2011 to establish a co-ordinated approach to the EU’s next major round of research funding under its Framework Programme Eight.