Science

Decisions we make now can have a bearing on how rapidly we shake off the recession and how many jobs we can rescue

THERE IS an important fact that we should keep in mind as we complain our way through the current tough economic times. Things will gradually get better and economic recovery will follow, just as it always does.

Every economic downturn is followed by an upturn and, while the gloom merchants have been shrill about the prospects of a 10-year recovery period until the banks come right, signs of recovery in the US, Germany, France and Britain will produce a tide certain to help us get our economic keel out of the muck.

Unfortunately, our economy is so open, the timing of the recovery and the "bounce" we achieve as a result is to a large extent out of our hands.

We do best when our trading partners are doing well, when they want the high-added-value goods we produce and foreign direct investment is buoyant. You also see it in our tourism sector when the visitors clearly show they are doing nicely at home and have money to spend when they arrive.

But we are not powerless. Decisions we make now can have a bearing on how rapidly we shake off the recession and how many jobs we can rescue in the process.

This is immediately apparent in the scientific research sector, where people wait with trepidation to learn of decisions currently being made in advance of the next estimates. How quickly we escape from the doldrums will depend, to a degree, on whether the existing science budget is maintained or cut.

The Government has been as good as its word in protecting the planned public/private science spend, worth €8.2 billion in the seven years through 2013, but there has been some trimming. In the emergency budget earlier this year, about €140 million was unintentionally cut from the State side of the spend as departments sought to reduce expenditure.

Junior minister for science Conor Lenihan has won agreement for the total Government science spend to be treated like a single combined budget line in the next estimates so it will be easier to track any subsequent changes as each department puts in its spending plans.

However the arithmetic plays out, the choice faced by the Department of Finance is quite simple: either leave the science budget alone or impose a cut. The likely outcomes from these two choices would be very different.

Leaving the science budget alone means our capacity to do world-class science, despite the current recession, will remain largely intact. Key funder Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) announced an investment worth €14.8 million in research late last month and the delayed Higher Education Authority's Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions spend will start to roll in 2010.

This money allows research teams to form and helps keep PhD and post-doctoral students gainfully employed. The money also helps to bring in senior researchers from abroad who typically import or create research teams around themselves to the benefit of Ireland's research infrastructure.

The planned spend allows SFI to marshal its finances, maintaining existing research agreements but also initiating new ones such as the one announced last month which will see University College Dublin and NUI Galway collaborating with industrial partners on advanced biological research.

Forcing a spending cut would have dire consequences. Many of SFI's researcher agreements have a four- or five-year lifespan, provided the scientist survives the periodic assessment process. That means each new batch of projects requires funding over this period, just as it does for the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology researcher investments and those made by other funding bodies.

If you cut the budget it puts at risk the ability to continue the agreed funding, but more importantly means there is nothing left to initiate new projects.

This in turn makes it significantly more difficult to attract both senior research scientists and post-doctoral fellows from abroad. These people are vital as a way to jumpstart expertise in research areas of strategic interest to us.

No established scientist will take the risk of coming to Ireland if there are questions about forward funding of research. Why would they if they already have established reputations at their home institutions?

Then there is the impact on our reputation abroad. This is not a small consideration: either you can successfully portray yourself as a "player" in research or you cannot. We particularly want to be known as scientific players because it will guide us gradually towards a "smart economy" but also because it pays handsome dividends via foreign direct investment. We consistently win important multinational investments because we have invested over the past 10 years to build up our international reputation in science.

One of the easiest ways of losing this is to start taking money out of the system. Either you put your money where your mouth is or you don't. Scientists and company executives based abroad won't be deceived if you make claims about the quality of your science and then shortchange those attempting to do the research.