Sir, – Sidney Altman and his colleagues (October 23rd) highlight the importance of science to the recovery and future development of the EU, and the very real dangers that would follow from possible drastic cuts to the budgets of European-level research funding bodies.
A similar situation is already being played out at a national level in Ireland, with funding for research in basic or fundamental science and mathematics being scaled back and potentially in the firing line in next month’s budget. Top-level researchers will not remain in Irish third-level institutions if they cannot access what amounts to modest levels of support to take on PhD students, let alone obtain grants for larger-scale projects.
While the highly specialised problems tackled by PhD students in mathematics may not appear to relate directly to the economic goals of the National Research Prioritisation Exercise (NRPE) of 2011, their training does in fact make them highly attractive to precisely the sorts of companies in the high-tech sector that the NRPE seeks to nurture.
There is a need to sort out which Government agency or department should be responsible for PhD training, be it Science Foundation Ireland, the Irish Research Council, a combined effort by the two, or whomever, and this must be done urgently before the fruits of the investment in mathematical research of the last 10 years are wasted.
It is a sad irony that this scaling back of the research infrastructure is taking place at the same time that the Government is putting great efforts into reform of mathematics at second-level through its Project Maths initiative. A vibrant third-level is surely a prerequisite for Project Maths to succeed. – Yours, etc,