Ireland fails to keep up with scientific elite

IN all the excitement of the switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider nobody mentioned that Ireland is one of the few European countries which isn’t a member of CERN — the European organisation for nuclear research.

How are we supposed to have a knowledge economy and promote science if we are not members of one of the world’s most important scientific organisations?

In recent days the OECD has published a report showing Ireland is near the bottom in levels of expenditure on education. It showed the percentage of GDP spent on education has fallen during Fianna Fáil’s tenure in power.