Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We should not have done that. Mathematicians and mathematics departments in Ireland have a duty to explain their subjects to young people. Writing articles in learned journals and so on is one thing but we need the supply of STEM people. When we are all gone and the articles are on dusty shelves in libraries, it will be time for the next generation of maths teachers, economics teachers and so on.

We have been neglecting undergraduates. According to the figures given by Mr. Boland of the Higher Education Authority to the Royal Irish Academy seminar on these issues, we have reduced expenditure per student in Irish universities from €11,500 down to €9,000 since 2006. There is no point in putting cliches in reports about how much Ireland cherishes higher education. We are not doing that, nor are we dealing with the number of unqualified maths teachers at second level or the inadequacies of teaching maths at primary level. The surveys show that most people teaching maths at primary level feel inadequate and nervous about the subject, although they are superbly confident in subjects like English and history. We have to deal with those problems.

Innovation 2020 also states that public sector policy making should be informed by research. I proposed an amendment to the climate change Bill.It provided for consultation with learned bodies such as the Royal Irish Academy, the environmental science departments of universities, the Royal Dublin Society and so forth, but it encountered into resistance. The Government is not doing research. The legislation relating to alcohol was debated in this House but hardly any research was carried out in respect of what would happen if the price was changed. The publican and the off-licence owner would be made richer but no research was done on whether what was proposed would change consumption levels or whether, if the latter occurred, there would be a cost to the Exchequer. The same applies to the Legal Services Regulation Act. No research was done on the cost of the conveyancing monopoly or the fact that one cannot access a barrister without a solicitor. We need much better research on legislation coming before the House.

The quality of the education system is vital. We need to deliver it as part of our public services. It is stated that we intend to revolutionise innovation in the health service. Where is the evidence for this ? We cannot even put in place a booking system for people in accident and emergency departments. Let us stop claiming credit for things we are not doing but let us go ahead and do them and promote that level of innovation. There is a concern that we have chosen priority areas, that original thought and blue-sky, or frontier, thinking is not encouraged and that a person will lose out if he or she is not working in one of the chosen areas. There is the tilting within universities in respect of research at the expense of lecturing to undergraduates, which will give rise to huge costs. To quote the jargon, undergraduate education has to be teaching-centric. Those who go in and take on 400 people - 600 in some cases - in a lecture hall should not be bypassed because someone wrote an article in a journal that hardly anyone reads or received a large grant for writing that article. We have taken our eye off the ball in preparing the next generation of people in the humanities, arts and social sciences.

The excluded Departments in the research exercise referred to at the end of the Innovation 2020 document include the Departments of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht - about which the Royal Irish Academy is extremely concerned - Transport, Tourism and Sport and Social Protection. Why can we not research new ways to tackle poverty? I applaud what the Minister of State is doing and the commercial emphasis it involves but many Departments did not turn up when he was promoting - with an enthusiasm that has been commended - more interest in innovation and research. There is a need for a vast amount of research on how the Department of Children and Youth Affairs should contribute to the development of children as citizens. Extending the remit of the Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation much more widely should be considered. This strategy is going in the right direction. The Minister of State mentioned 40,000 researchers and I commend him in that regard.

On page 39 of the strategy, reference is made to "scoring applicants who have successful industry linkages but lower numbers of publications/citations than candidates with a purely academic record". That is a silly use of language. We have to compete at the highest level possible, that is, with the Harvards, Yales and so on. Making a dismissive remark about people with a purely academic record seems to me to be rather strange. The other strange emphasis in the strategy, which, in a sense, does down Ireland, is the four countries we have chosen as our exemplars and comparators. Denmark, Finland, and Israel are to be compared with Ireland. Ireland has a substantially higher GDP per head than Denmark and Finland and has performed massively better in economic terms than Israel. We have a GDP per head of €51,000; Israel has a GDP per head of $36,000. I wonder from where those strange models came.

As the banking inquiry comes to an end, there is a need for serious consideration of what was called contrarian research. Professor Morgan Kelly compiled 40 papers on collapses and bank busts and so on but was ignored by the establishment, namely, the Government and the Central Bank. We have to get away from that type of approach and have more original thinking. We need more tolerance for people whose views diverge from what could be a very rigid, almost Stalinist kind of system. Some of the people left out of scientific research do feel rather cross when their subjects are downgraded. In particular, we have to start investing money into mathematics teacher training and undergraduates. Expenditure on undergraduates has decreased by €2,500 each, from €11,500 to €9,000. We cannot say we are investing in it and that it is the finest education system in the world yet continue to deny it funds.

I know we have had an appalling problem bailing out banks and so on and that is the context. No one did this deliberately. However, we need to develop this for the future. Senator Bacik mentioned Professor William C. Campbell, the Nobel Prize winner, who paid special tribute to his mentor at TCD. If that is not going to happen any more, we will not see that many more Nobel prizes and we will not see graduates performing at the level we would wish. The number of dropouts also has to be taken seriously. Some courses have a dropout rate of 80%. I commend the people who ran the courses-----