Research and innovation must remain priority in spite of Covid 19 restrictions

Now is the time to double down and ensure investment in third-level education, while research and innovation remains a top priority for the next government, despite the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Professor Patrick O'Shea

Mr Love said Ireland has seen the "fruits of investment" that the country put into higher education 20 years ago, with those who had matured in it now helping us through the worst of Covid-19. However he said Ireland has a huge challenge in now ensuring a new swathe of talent can be utilised to face the next great crisis.

What is needed in the immediate term to stabilise Ireland for the recovery, he asked.

Mr Clinch said health and employment is understandably the focus of the next government, namely getting people back to work in labour-intensive sectors.

"It will be very difficult to get the attention of the government for a sector in any real or substantive way, so we need to set out what went wrong in the last recovery process. We had a spectacular recovery from the last crisis.

"We had made very significant investments in infrastructure in the run up to the crisis, which gave us the productive capacity to recover. We had all of those things going for us, with a highly-skilled young workforce, strong inward investments supported by high-quality business environment. You had very rapid growth resulting from an expert-led boom," he said.

However, investment in key areas didn't keep up with economic growth, such as housing and higher education, innovation, research and climate change, he warned.