HE DIDN’T go so far as to pose in a white lab coat, but British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg made a brief visit to the laboratories of UCD yesterday as part of a meet-and-greet with charities, researchers and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
“I think opening doors to opportunity is a big theme of my visit here,” said Mr Clegg, declaring a “personal interest” after a chat with participants in the Preparing for Life programme, which works with parents of young children in north Dublin to try to overcome educational disadvantage.
“If you want to have a socially mobile kind of society where everyone can get on irrespective of the circumstances of their birth, you need to start young, and I don’t say this just as a father of young children,” he said.
“All the evidence shows if you start young – get them ready for school right at the beginning – that then helps them dream big dreams and come to universities like this.”
Early intervention schemes are not, “on their own”, enough to help people overcome economic disadvantage in light of rising university costs, admitted the Liberal Democrats leader, who has been criticised for a U-turn on a pledge not to raise tuition fees.
“But I think they’re part of a whole patchwork of things that you can do to try and make sure that as we come out of these difficult economic times, we come out of it as a fairer community.”
Accompanied by Minister for Enterprise Richard Bruton, Mr Clegg was shown around the UCD Conway Institute for biomolecular and biomedical research to see for himself the academic backdrop to one part of the Irish economy, the pharma sector, where exports have carried on booming.
Mr Clegg also met consultant oncologist Prof John Crown and Brian Moulton, the chief executive of the All Ireland Co-operative Oncology Research Group (Icorg), which seeks to give Irish patients early access to new cancer treatments.
Journalist Áine Lawlor, who is on leave from RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, told Mr Clegg about her participation in an Icorg drug trial as part of her treatment for cancer.
