Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I ask the Leader as a matter of urgency to invite the Minister of Education and Science to come and speak about the role of our universities in the life of the country in the 21st century. Dr. Craig Barrett, speaking in the Mansion House last week on education and competitiveness, spelt out the reason Intel came to Ireland 20 years ago was because of the high educational standard of our young people. He spelt out that we have lost our position in the league - we are now only average. He stated that our blueprint for success in the past had been foreign direct investment, and I agree.

I believe that those days are over. We can no longer depend on foreign direct investment because we are not competitive in many areas. In the future investment must be made in indigenous ideas. New ideas come from universities in any country that is really competing at a serious level, such as the United States which has MIT, Stanford and Berkeley, and Israel which is a major competitive force.

Our eye has been taken off the ball. We are no longer No. 1, even in the hunger for learning and education. We have become complacent over the past 20 years and this will continue unless the Government takes initiatives. UCD and Trinity College came into the top 100 universities league worldwide last year, but they are not wealth creators. We must get the universities to play their role in developing indigenous industry via research carried out by them. These are industries of the future will come from science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and the universities must become centres of wealth creators like Stanford, MIT and Israel's universities. I want an urgent debate on the role of the universities as wealth creators and the development of indigenous industries in the future. On the current blueprint for foreign direct investment, we are no longer competitive and that era is over.