The Government needs to adopt a long-term approach to sciencefunding, according to the Council of Directors of the Institutes of Technology. Dick Ahlstrom reports.
The Government has created uncertainty within the research community given recent cutbacks that have taken essential funding out of Irish laboratories. The overall amount of money is not the issue but rather the lack of clarity that this funding pause has caused, according to Dr Tom Collins, director of Dundalk Institute of Technology.
Collins chairs the research committee within the Council of Directors of the Institutes of Technology. He and other IT directors viewed with considerable alarm the decision to freeze capital spending under the key Programme for Research in Third- Level Institutions, run for the Department of Education and Science by the Higher Education Authority.
"The biggest single problem was the pause in the PRTLI," says Collins. "It indicated a certain discretionary orientation to [State support for] research. In the good times the support is there, but in the not-so-good times you pull it. It was a great pity PRTLI was put on the long finger and there is still no clear idea of what its long-term situation is."
The IT sector is an important element of the State's third-level education system. The 13 ITs are distributed throughout the regions and so have a broader national reach than the universities. They cater for a comparable number of students as well, providing a wide range of cert, diploma and degree courses.
Research is becoming increasingly important to what the ITs hope to achieve. The Council of Directors' recent publication, Institutes of Technology and the Knowledge Society:Their Future Position and Roles, released in May, maps out the increasingly important research contribution the ITs can make as the Government steers us towards a knowledge-based economy.
Collins acknowledged that the institutes were often less successful when bidding for research support under the two big funding programmes, PRTLI and that operated by Science Foundation Ireland.
"There are small grant allocations to the sector via, say, Enterprise Ireland, but they are miniscule compared to what is available even through the reduced PRTLI," says Collins. "The kind of links that a college like this can build with the local community and business sector is economically important, and this is not adequately being resourced in funding allocations."
This he says is a "missed opportunity" and a situation that the Government should exploit given the coming changes that Collins foresees when the volume of direct foreign investment here begins to fall off. The State is being undercut by cheaper labour and lower taxes in emerging states, he says.
"As foreign direct investment declines we need to replace that with a different kind of resource. The different kind of resource has to be updating indigenous industry and developing the indigenous industrial sector."
This, he believes, is a key area for the ITs, which excel in applied research and applications close to market. The 13 regionally-based ITs can assist in this "knowledge transfer" into local companies.
"All of the ITs have close links with the economic base of these regions," he argues. He believes the Government should create a new funding programme aimed at applied research activity and knowledge transfer.
"I think there needs to be a dedicated research programme for applied research with a specific focus on indigenous and local industry," he says. While it would be open to all- comers, this is an area where the ITs could compete on a more equal footing against the universities, he believes.
"I think it would be important that the Government turn the universities in this direction as well. This kind of research is directly linked to the support and promotion of businesses and start-up companies. It is an area that lacks recognition in terms of investment by the State."
In terms of ongoing Government policy on State support for research, Collins believes the most important element is consistency.
"I think it needs to take a much more even and long-term approach to funding. The start-stop approach is very disconcerting," he says. "The lack of long-term certainty is a real problem. There needs to be some kind of clearly committed and dedicated agenda and funding that is not year on year going to be affected by the start-stop."