Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 3, line 24, to delete ?strategic?.

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Sherlock, to the House. There was a good Second Stage debate on this Bill last week and I have some suggestions to make to the Minister of State, in the hope that he may find them useful in bringing forward the Bill. Members are aware this is an important issue and that investment in education, research and human capital is part of how the economy grows, which in turn enriches the rest of society. This is not merely about markets but is about people having the funds to do many other things. Members are aware that part of the problem currently being encountered has been the necessity to set aside so many projects because the State has run out of funds because of difficulties in other areas. There is research indicating that in modern economies, probably two thirds of growth is due to improvements in human capital and not to physical capital. Consequently, improving the quality of people, the work they do, the education they receive, the research they carry out and the new products and innovations they develop all are goals to which Members aspire and which the Government has reassessed in the framework of this Bill.

Members also must take account of the fact that things did go very wrong, albeit not necessarily in this area, but the implications for this area of things going wrong elsewhere are serious. Funds are not unlimited and when investigating this sector, an bord snip nua found it very difficult to get statements of outputs from those who were spending large amounts of money. Between them, I believe the first and second strategic innovation funds encompassed approximately ¤140 million. This was a very large budget and an bord snip nua's complaint was the system used to administer it did not measure the outputs to the wider society as a whole. Colm McCarthy's complaint regarding this group was that the main evidence of activity and output with which he was presented was the number of refereed articles but he sought something broader. I believe this is the reason changes were undertaken by the Government in Science Foundation Ireland to concentrate on the 14 strategic areas. As the Minister of State is aware, there were also complaints by the Committee of Public Accounts, as well as some fairly arduous sessions between the heads of universities and the members of the aforementioned committee.

This seems to reflect a growth in bureaucracy and managerialism as well as, one might say, a loss of perspective on what this budget is supposed to be about. I perceive it primarily as relating to how this sector looks after the next generation. Consequently, one point I will be addressing is that any use of research money from this foundation or any other foundation to "buy out lecturing" strikes me as appalling. In the Trinity College Dublin to which I went, the senior people made it an absolutely vital essential that they saw every single first-year student. They went into the Edmund Burke Theatre and lectured to 400 people. They did not regard themselves as being any kind of elite, which had distanced itself from the group it was supposed to serve because after all, the latter are the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists, mathematicians and so on. I actually received documents stating one could use this money to "buy out lecturing". Needless to say, I refused, on the grounds that the reason I went there was to give lectures. However, such a mentality was abroad at the time.

Consequently, in light of the straitened circumstances of the national finances, the urgency of dealing with the serious growth in unemployment and debt and household debt and so on, this budget must become more focused and I commend the Minister of State in this regard. Moreover, lessons can be learned from some of the faults to which I have referred, as found out by an bord snip. I believe they found approximately 70 people in TCD and UCD, in receipt of an average salary of ¤80,000, who were administering research budgets. They were not giving lectures or conducting research but were filling in forms about people conducting research. It is a question of what can be done to reduce this and put the money to use elsewhere. I believe the well-known slogan in this area, "More scholar per dollar", will appeal to the Minister of State. I will investigate what the euro version of that slogan should be.

An evaluation of the strategic innovation fund was conducted, a lot of money was spent and an bord snip nua was particularly caustic about that. It is important to direct money towards where one can show definite results. One of the measures of results, namely, what is the income of the funding bodies, that is, the universities in terms of patents, royalties and research income apart from the grants from the Government, is actually minuscule. In many cases, it would compare with just a handful of undergraduates. Consequently, the State has been spending a lot of money and it is not insulting the scientific profession to state one would like to see some measure of output and some measure of results.

Obviously, those who were excluded do not like the Government's concentration on the 14 areas. It has been said to me that this is akin to taking last year's successful racehorse results, going to the races in five years' time and betting on the same horses on the assumption that things may happen. I am uncertain whether this analogy is correct, given all that has happened in the horse business, but using previous experience to project the future has its hazards. One suggestion I have made is the Government should keep some funding open and run approximately 20%, or whatever percentage the Minister of State might decide, against the 14 areas.

That would be important if something entirely novel outside the 14 areas looks good. In addition, there should be a limit on the 14. I have suggested that it might be a rolling 14. One would expect two or three of them to drop out each year and we could put in others so that we are not stuck with an outdated portfolio of projects or researchers who believe that the research is, to use the current phrase, of indefinite duration. In view of the amount of bureaucracy involved, and the need to cut it, I propose in the amendment to bring in people from the fields themselves. I listed learned societies. That is important as there is a huge industry called university and bureaucratic politics but it does not do anything. We want to get to the research and to the lecturer and we want to connect the two again.

All of this must relate to the next generation and what is happening in teacher training. As the Minister of State is aware, he and I have a cause in common, namely, what is happening in mathematics in this country. If we are interested in the next generation of scholars and researchers, there must be connections. I have some concerns that the current reconfiguration of teacher training is not going the Finnish route, which as I understand it is that a person teaching a subject such as science, mathematics or technology ? the areas covered by the Bill ? should have a masters degree in the subject. We seem to have gone in the opposite direction in that teacher training is not connected to the academic departments in which mathematics, sciences and languages are being taught but is moved to a separate enclave. That disconnect could be serious because the Minister of State is seeking, and we are supporting him, to get a solid foundation for science. For example, to be a mathematics teacher it would be eminently desirable that one would have attended all of the mathematics lectures right up to masters level with other people learning mathematics as well. The idea that there is an inferior or baby mathematics for people who become teachers totally understates the importance of primary and second level in building up the capacity that is being sought in the legislation, which we support.

Some of the comments by employers and employer bodies that they do not much like the look of some of the graduates is a legitimate statement. In the United States that would be dealt with by philanthropy. The corporations which felt there was a need to help promote mathematics would provide money to endow a number of sizarships and fellowships because it would be in the broad national interest. I tend to discount statements by wealthy industrialists paying low rates of corporate tax and blaming universities for not doing what they would like. They should become involved. I am sure the funds officers of all of the colleges would be delighted for multinationals and Irish industry to assist in this vital national need.

It is important the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and perhaps the Department of Finance, is involved in evaluating outcomes. This reform is vital because it is not just in this area we threw funds at initiatives and never bothered to measure whether there was any return. That cannot continue in the era of promissory notes and subsequent to it. It is necessary to develop those kinds of models because value for money is more important than ever.

There was a certain exclusivity in the way we approached the issue in the past in that only science, technology, engineering and mathematics were important. Mathematics dropped off the radar. Some branches of science are annoyed at being excluded. The knowledge economy excluded a significant part of the knowledge one would find in any good university, so there was elitism in that regard. One could say that part of the ingredients of the progress of the country and the economy in the future will involve mathematics, basic economics for senior public servants and even more basic economics for people in banking. We must also address language deficiencies in terms of doing business outside the English-speaking world. Those subjects do not cost much money but they are a vital part of knowledge. That is the reason I have tabled an amendment on wider knowledge. We should not be so arrogant that only three subjects could possibly be endowed with research funds on the basis of their contribution to economic growth. It is important to remember that simple things could also be done which are attractive in the case of an Exchequer in our situation. We could undertake simple tasks that would improve the overall competitiveness of the economy and not define knowledge so narrowly.

I gather from my science friends that one of the excluded subjects is botany. That sounds like a remote academic subject but our late friend and colleague, Shane McEntee, was trying to cope with the damage caused to trees in this country by imported diseases, in particular, ash dieback disease, which is ten times more serious than the problem with Dutch elm disease. Botany is not included in one of the 14 priority areas but, in time, if the Minister of State has some flexibility, I urge him to include botany to save the forests of this country because they could be valuable to the landscape. Perhaps we could develop an industry based on our distance from places where they do have tree diseases. We could develop an industry around the export of healthy plants. Many scientists feel left out from access to the funds. Others in academe feel left out as well. In the wider national interest, those who do get the money should be able to show the Minister of State and the House the returns. Heretofore, the policy appears to have been very much kicking in hope.

Amendments Nos. 1, 3 and 18 have been grouped together. In the light of what I have said, it is probably somewhat self-indulgent but I hate the word ?strategic?. It is a Greek military word and the definition according to the Oxford English Dictionaryincludes demoralising the opposition. It means nothing. If it means important, let us call it important but it is typically used to give somebody a fancy title over the person who will actually do the work. As it means nothing I suggest that it would be dropped from all Government documents. I will not push the point any further. It is meaningless, self-important and managerialist, and is nothing to do with the world of learning. In the world of learning one either impresses people by one?s ideas or one does not. Calling oneself ?strategic? does not mean anything. One person I knew in an Irish university was called the director of strategic innovation. His nickname was ?Disi? based on putting the initials together. Strategic is a pointless word that university heads love and it means nothing to those who do the work. I will not press the amendments. It is a mere suggestion to improve the nomenclature.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for allowing me to reintroduce the conversation between the Minister of State and me on this topic but I will not press the three amendments, Nos. 1, 3 and 18, unless someone else has strong views about the word ?strategic?.