In the old days they used to read bird entrails. Tea leaves and tarot cards are a more modern option. However, finding some way to predict the future is a deadly serious business if Ireland is to sustain its economic growth and remain strong in the future.

The Minister of State for Commerce, Science and Technology, Mr Noel Treacy, launched Ireland's first comprehensive foresight exercise on March 31st. The Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (ICSTI) was charged with overseeing the work. ICSTI member and chairman of Siemens, Mr Brian Sweeney, was appointed to head the initiative. Technology foresight is a structured attempt to predict where science, technology and innovation will be some time in the future. The initiative uses a 15-year horizon, explained Mr Sweeney.

"The Japanese, the Germans, New Zealand and several others have been doing technology foresight for some years," he said. "Our idea was to see how they went about doing it, hopefully making new mistakes rather than old ones."

Foresight can be a fraught activity, however, and mistakes can be held up for all to see. Mr Sweeney points to the confident prediction made by computer specialists in 1946 that just 15 computers would be enough to satisfy world demand for processing power. Then there was the observation in 1965 by the British Astronomer Royal that manned space flight was all "hokum".

The object from the beginning was to get the exercise up and running fast and then make a final report to the Minister and to ICSTI before the end of this year. The programme remains on schedule, Mr Sweeney said.

Newspaper advertisements yesterday invited members of the public and commercial interests to make submissions to the eight technical panels that were established as part of the exercise.

These include crystal ball gazers in chemicals and pharmaceuticals; computer hardware, software and telecommunications technology; natural resources; health and life sciences; construction and infrastructure; materials and manufacturing processes; transport and logistics; and energy.

"The consultation up to now has largely been within the panels," Mr Sweeney said. The work will now divert outwards into the commercial world, bringing in the views of outside experts. Each panel will then distil what it learns into well defined questions.

For example, he said, the logistics group might define their work as: "How do we ensure that goods, people and everything else is moved on and off this island as efficiently as possible by the year 2015?"

"The only reason for doing this is to avoid chaos," he believes. ICSTI, he said, had learned from the mistakes of others, groups that sent panel members in all directions. "Some of them went down a mine and spent years doing reports that were out of date by the time they were published." Another failing was to produce reports so complex that it became necessary to hire consultants to interpret them.

There are "horizontal elements" that interlock all of the panels, he said. "The research and development aspect is writ large across all panels."

Education is another common theme. "Human resources go right across every one of them." The environment is yet another.

"To date, while a good deal has happened, we are not just there to lobby to get more money. We want what resources there are to be used more efficiently. There will be things out there we won't foresee but, if we keep the fundamentals right, we will be right in the core areas. We won't worry about what happens at the fringes."

And what of his own prediction? "If we do this well, we will have something of substance."