Fears are widespread in the university sector that students will be among the first to suffer if the Government goes along with the proposal to establish free-standing research institutes in computers and biotechnology. "We are concerned that the establishment of stand-alone institutes will serve to drive a wedge between the research that researchers engage in and the teaching they engage in," argues Dr Shane O'Mara, who is outgoing president of the Irish Research Scientists Association. If the two functions are separated by the syphoning off of researchers into separate institutes, "undergraduates would no longer be taught cutting-edge, state-of-the-art knowledge," he says.
O'Mara also argues that it is naive to think that Ireland can attract world-class researchers on short term contracts. "Competition for such people is intense because their numbers are limited." Typically, he says, these people are in their late thirties to early fifties and have substantial research records. Rather than going after established researchers, we should be spotting younger talent - "people with their best years ahead of them, not behind them". "The history of government institutes is dismal," says Dr Eoin O'Neill, TCD's director of innovation services. "The last thing we need is another institute, half-starved of cash and full of demoralised scientists." Public service structures are not conducive to research activity, he argues. "You can't have tightly controlled programmes. You have to have people who have a disregard for time and place." "There's a lot of experience and evidence in Europe that would cast serious doubts on the viability of stand-alone institutes which are divorced from the universities," adds NUI Galway's dean of research, Professor Tom Boylan. "The huge amounts of money that are currently being put into university research (the HEA £230 million research funding and the separate £550 million allocated to research, technology, development and innovation in third-level institutions under the National Development Plan) have led to quantum increases in our research capacity. After a lean period of 25 years, when government funding for research was negligible, he says: "there is something questionable about this proposal to delink the university sector from the new institutes."
Researchers also fear that the industrial sector, which is pushing for the establishment of stand-alone institutes, lacks a real understanding of basic research and will demand quick returns on investment. Many of the really big research discoveries, it is argued, are likely to come out of research which may not qualify for funding by State-controlled research establishments. Professor Frank Gannon, the former NUI Galway academic who now heads up the European Molecular Biology Organisation in Germany, argues for the value of research establishments with close university links. "Seeing the success of a high quality research establishment here at EMBL in Heidelberg I think that it would achieve something extra if established in Ireland. It certainly will add significantly to the visibility of the Government's investment. "It will also create, if properly organised, and if only the highest quality standards are enforced, a concentration of high achievers in research, which would stimulate all. If there are good contacts between the institute and the universities - and here location is important - then both will benefit."
