Ireland advised to invest heavily in technology to maintain job creation

Countries maintaining high levels of employment creation are investing heavily in science and technology. It is a strategy which Ireland needs to reinforce if it is to sustain its current economic momentum, according to the agency Forfas.

The agency, which advises on science, innovation and industrial development policy, yesterday called for moves to ensure that sufficient numbers are generated with the technology skills required by international industry.

"Most of the overseas industries, which are fuelling the current high level of employment-creation, are science and technology-based," said Forfas executive director Mr Colm Regan. "There is a need to ensure that people with the wide-ranging high-technology skills required in the future will be produced by the educational system."

The current momentum is much more likely to be sustained, he said, if Ireland can provide suitably trained personnel in science and technology. Ireland is close to the EU average in science including engineering degrees awarded annually - three in 10 graduates. It leads the world in production of technical graduates as a proportion of the labour force - even ahead of Japan. Notwithstanding this, Forfas wished to highlight the considerable scope for more science and engineering graduates - which it is doing during Science Week 1997. Coinciding with the week, the Institute of Designers in Ireland is hoping to stimulate greater awareness and use of design by Irish business. IDI president Ms Catriona Shaffrey said: "Our goods have to be of excellent design to gain acceptance in an increasingly sophisticated market." This has been endorsed by Mr Gary Anderson, technical director of the Eddie Jordan grand prix team. "Design is part of everything we see and do, from brushing our teeth to driving a car. Each item used has to be designed by an engineer. But many people are unaware of the role which design plays in science and technology. This kind of awareness needs to be highlighted."

Meanwhile, Prof Paul McNulty, of UCD's department of agricultural and food engineering, warned last night that the potential benefits of genetic engineering may be diminished by the absence of mandatory labelling of genetically modified food.

Speaking at a Science Week lecture in UCD, he said full disclosure of information would provide consumers with the choice they require and confidence in the food regulatory process. "It should also enhance the prospects of market penetration for this exciting technology."

The prospect that the universe has no future was the focus of an Astronomy Ireland presentation at Dublin City University. "We know the universe cannot continue as it is forever, eventually all matter will form stars and these will die," astronomer Mr David Moore said. "It looks likely that matter is unstable in the long term, so even if it does not collapse in on itself, it will effectively vanish in a puff of smoke."

He was speaking after Mr John Flynn, of Armagh Planetarium, considered the possibility in an introduction to cosmology that the sum total of the universe might be zero.