It's a second term as Minister of State in charge of science and technology for Michael Smith, although unlike in 1989-91 he is now serving two masters, the Department of Enterprise and Employment and the Department of Education. In terms of political experience he is the latter's ranking Minister, having been in parliamentary politics since 1969, and twice a full Cabinet minister.
This is in itself a recognition by the Government of the importance of the role of new technologies, and the third-level research programmes which develop them, in the country's economy on the eve of the 21st century.
Smith admits that some people in industry were worried that the move to divide science and technology between Enterprise and Education would see research and development funding moving away from business towards higher education. However, he stresses the necessity for the private sector and the colleges to work together at a time when industry needs to have "access to the leading edge of research now required for knowledge-based competitiveness."
Smith will be have the thankless task of trying to raise the extremely low level of Government funding for capital equipment for third-level research, currently running at around £2 million per year. He will try to persuade the universities and technological colleges to co-ordinate their research rather than competing for scarce resources, and to encourage greater mobility between academic researchers and people in high-tech industry.
As chairman, Smith will preside over a committee bringing together all Government departments and agencies with an interest in science and technology to produce a national science and technology plan and to prioritise funding allocations.
He will oversee a number of concrete initiatives - one being Ireland's first exercise in `Technology Foresight', pioneered many years ago in Japan as a way of predicting trends, opportunities and threats in future science technology, and working out how they can be exploited by Irish firms.
Another initiative will be the drawing up of a directory of Irish research capabilities on the Internet, which Irish researchers at home and abroad can continually update.
A third will be the legal incorporation of the seven Programmes in Advanced Technologies in Irish universities and research laboratories into one state-owned company. This will bring together the work of nearly 700 staff and postgraduate researchers at 35 centres in fields as different as microelectronics, software and optronics. He will also set up a joint industry-university committee to advise him on funding allocations.
