North-South science links poor, policy group told

Ireland has a good record in Irish-UK scientific collaboration but the level of North-South links is relatively poor, a group of British and Irish science policy specialists was told in Dublin.

"Building closer Irish-UK collaboration in the Fifth Framework Programme" was the title of the symposium jointly organised by the Royal Dublin Society and the UK Foundation for Science and Technology. It explored how the two countries might gain better advantage from the forthcoming EU Fifth Framework (FP5) research budget, due for agreement at the end of this year and expected to be worth at least £12 billion.

The meeting was chaired jointly by the chairman of the foundation, Lord Jenkin of Roding, and Prof Dervilla Donnelly, professor of chemistry at UCD and a past president of the RDS. It was opened with an address by the Minister of State for Science, Technology and Commerce, Mr Noel Treacy, who detailed the level of Irish-UK involvement in scientific research.

Ireland, he said, had done exceptionally well in winning research funding from the current Fourth Framework Programme (FP4) and previous programmes. "There are clear opportunities presented to business, both big and small, and the Framework Programme is a positive stimulus to both the European and our respective national systems of innovation," he told delegates.

About 20 per cent of all the links created by Ireland under the Fourth Framework were with the UK, Mr Treacy said. There were 905 UK links in the busiest areas of industrial and materials technologies, telematics, agriculture and fisheries and information technology, he said, but of these just 17 were with researchers or industrial partners in Northern Ireland.

"These are the sectoral areas and the numbers which can be built upon in the future and every effort must be made by all of us to achieve this," he said.

There was a high degree of continuity between FP4 and FP5, according to Dr Susan Hedigan, of the office for funded research services at UCD. "While there are underlying policy shifts there are in fact huge synergies between the two programmes."

Prof Robert Freedman, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Kent at Canterbury, described the UK university experience of the EU research programmes. He said Kent had a strategy to build bridges with other EU states and 15 per cent of its student body came from outside Britain.

The UK industrial viewpoint was provided by Prof Jim Leslie, of Unilever Research, who spoke of the important contribution made by EU-funded research and said this would become increasingly important. "The outsourcing of research is actually the growth industry of the last few years."