Mary Henry (Independent)

There can be few people in the country today who have not heard of the national spatial strategy and the drive to decentralise the development of the country from Dublin. The arguments in the report are clear. Any hope of a future for regions outside Dublin depends on an actively managed suite of policies encouraging the industrial, educational, infrastructural and political development of the regions.

In that context, the recent decision of the Department of Education and Science to curtail or eliminate the technological sector research programme, TSRP, seems, at best, incongruous and, at worst, deliberately destructive of the spatial strategy. The TSRP has, for several years, supported the development of regionally based research and knowledge expertise in the institutes of technology. The capability has functioned as both a support to the education and training of technologically literate graduates and as a direct support to local and regional innovation.

Ireland's future economic development will not be on the strength of its manufacturing potential but on the ability of its companies to innovate successfully and to be competitive in the international market. If the Minister had been here earlier, he would have heard Senator White stress the need for competitiveness and she is a successful business woman. To innovate successfully, Irish companies need access to locally based centres of expertise. Critical to the development of Ireland's knowledge economy is access to a workforce that understands knowledge, its production, organisation and utilisation. Knowledge is the raw material of the current age.

Study after study has underlined the importance of local access to expertise in successful regional development. Some studies estimate the "sphere of influence" to be as small as 50 km. in radius from the centre. It is no coincidence that, almost without exception, the institutes of technology are sited almost 100 km. apart to maximise there regional impact. The importance of regional expertise is also illustrated in studies of patenting activity where expertise local to the company filing the patent is cited rather than that from another region or country.

The capacity of the institutes of technology to deliver this expertise was being developed through the TSRP. In the absence of the TSRP and its specific function in the support regional innovation capacity, hundreds of students will no longer have the option of being innovative researchers, many tens of innovative research teams established over the past few years will have to disband and teams working in the area of renewable energy, e-business, sustainable development, laser optics, telecommunications, software, rural economics and urban sociology, to name but a few, will be lost.

The Minister for Education and Science recently attended an EU conference at which the impact of third level research on regional economic development was a major theme. As Dr. John Donovan, chair of the Irish Research Scientists' Association pointed out: "It is a wonder how the Minister could say to any of his colleagues that Ireland is so committed to the development of its regions when it has eliminated what are, in many cases, the only support for the regional innovator and entrepreneur. How can he be taken seriously when his right hand is stroking the national spatial strategy while his left hand is strangling it at birth?"

In the wider European context, Ireland has committed itself to the Lisbon declaration "...to be the most dynamic, knowledge based economy in the world" and agreed to spend 3% of GDP on research and development. The purpose of this is to provide a sound underpinning of knowledge creation, manipulation and exploitation on which to base our future economic development. Extinguishing the TSRP will ensure that any value of the 3% investment will be entirely contained within Dublin and larger urban regions. Smaller urban and rural regions will be actively denied access to expertise that will create jobs, sustain communities and ensure balanced regional development.

In his message to me Dr. Donovan wondered how many regional Deputies and candidates in the local and European election campaigns realise that the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of their regions is being so callously removed. I urge the Minister to reverse the decisions he has made in this regard in light of the importance of the TSRP to the economy of rural Ireland.