Sir, – We write in support of Dr Luke O’Neill and Dr Jane Ohlmeyer, and other eminent researchers (Letter, April 26th), who asked Minister for Further Education Harris to ensure that Irish research funding should be substantially strengthened. We would like to make one point.
About 25 years ago, under the leadership of then-minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Harney and department secretary general Paul Haran, advised by senior civil servants John Travers, Ronald Long and Killian Halpin, and with full support of the IDA, we established in Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), one of the best systems in the world for funding science. It was politically unavoidable that SFI had a rather limited focus (biotechnology and information technology, broadly defined, with no provision for other sciences or for the arts and humanities) but it was an excellent model and the scope to be broadened. In the early years it led to a resurgence in certain sectors of Irish research and the winning of a good number of grants from outside Ireland, notably from the European Research Council (ERC) and the Wellcome Trust.
The guiding principle was to find and fund individual scholars (principal investigators) on the basis of excellence, as assessed by leading scientists from abroad. It came under various political pressures and the financial crisis was a hammer blow. Despite the best intentions of some excellent SFI staff, the SFI was further diminished.
Having been poorly led and with little political support, SFI became a pale shadow of its original conception. Scholars came to have much less reason to respect it. The weak national support for cutting-edge science made it increasingly difficult to win international grants.
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There can be various secondary programmes, but the key to a high-quality research infrastructure is to focus on funding research on the ideas proposed by the most talented scholars who want to work in Ireland, with special provision for the encouragement of young researchers. The recipe is simple – translate into Ireland the principles and practices of the universally respected and efficient European Research Council. – Yours, etc,
DAVID
McCONNELL, MRIA,
Fellow Emeritus in Genetics;
DENIS WEAIRE, MRIA, FRS,
Professor Emeritus
in Physics,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.