Public funds urged for research in colleges

EXISTING jobs and future investment could be lost if more public funding is not put into research in our colleges, an expert has warned.

Ernst Max Nielson, founder of the Intellectual Capital Network in Denmark, said links between industry and third level institutions must also be improved. He was addressing a conference in Waterford, aimed at promoting closer links between researchers, funding agencies and industry.

“There have been increases in funding, but the level is not high enough yet. The benefits of research funding should not be measured by the number of patents or spin-off companies the work creates, but by the potential of attracting or retaining overseas investors,” said Mr Nielsen, who has worked with commercialising research for 20 years.

The IT & Telecommunications conference was organised by TecNet, a research agency set up by the institutes of technology and Enterprise Ireland to improve collaboration between researchers in the institutes and industry.

TecNet chief executive Eugene O’Leary said the Government should consider trebling public funding for research: “This can be achieved by diverting public spending from commodity-based budgets, such as tourism marketing and farming subsidies, to an intellectual property model.”

Higher Education Authority chairman Dr Don Thornhill told a conference in Dublin yesterday it would be an inefficient use of money to cut spending on research: “We cannot return to the days of 1980s when our best researchers expended their energy in trying to keep their labs adequately equipped rather than on exploring the knowledge frontier.”

Opening the HEA’s Creating the Innovation Society conference, Education Minister Noel Dempsey said Irish educational policy has always acknowledged the importance of scholarship with comprehensive engagement in research. A recent HEA strategy document recommended the Government create a review mechanism to continuously review the effectiveness of public spending on research and development. The authority has allocated 600m to science and humanities research since 1999, resulting in 800 new researchers, new buildings and equipment.