£560m technology fund group set up

The Tanaiste has launched a research foundation to oversee the spending of the £560 million Technology Foresight Fund established under the National Development Plan. A 10-member implementation group has been established to advise on the foundation's structures and get it working in three months.

Ms Harney made the announcement yesterday at Dublin Castle to a large audience which included industrialists, academics and civil servants. It was "genuinely a historic day," she said.

The funding represented the "biggest ever investment in research and science by any government," and would become an "integral part of our future industrial policy."

The implementation group would be established immediately and would be chaired by Mr Paul Haran, the secretary general of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, said the Minister of State for Science, Commerce and Technology, Mr Noel Treacy.

The group will include Mr Brian Sweeney, chairman of Siemens Group Ireland and deputy chairman of the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation; Mr John Travers, chief executive of Forfas; Mr Don Thornhill, chairman of the Higher Education Authority; Prof Gerry Wrixon, president of UCC; and Prof Michael Murphy, chairman of the Health Research Board.

The group would make recommendations on the structure of the foundation and the membership selection criteria, Ms Harney said.

The foundation will have a chief executive and a head of research for the two key areas to be supported by the initiative, computing and biotechnology. "It must have the capacity to be dynamic," the Tanaiste said.

An international "competitive peer review process" will be used to identify suitable research initiatives, she said. These would be welcome from any quarter here, but the foundation would also have the option to establish its own laboratories, if necessary to achieve a world-class standard of research.

The Government's decision to hitch the State's economic future to these two high-tech knowledge-based industries would in future years rank with the momentous decisions of the 1960s to back industrialisation, the Tanaiste said.

"The investment we are making now will generate our prosperity in the future. It is not about putting money into bricks and mortar, it is about putting money into people."

The £560 million would be used over the next seven years and would enable Ireland to become a world leader in biotechnology and computer technology research, Mr Treacy stated.

"Our future will be defined by the decisions of today and the discoveries of tomorrow delivered by our own people with international assistance in the years ahead."

The planned foundation was roundly welcomed by both industry and academia. The managing director of the Industry Research and Development Group, Dr Dick Kavanagh, who also spoke for IBEC, described it as a "great idea" and welcomed the fact that the proposals retained an "industry focus, not just research for the sake of research".

The initiative would "help reposition Ireland as having the capability to operate at the highest end of R&D," according to the IDA.

The chief executive of Forfas, Mr John Travers, said it would "provide an essential building block in the new strategy for the promotion of industry and enterprise in Ireland."

The funding would "totally transform the research landscape in Ireland," said Dr Patrick Fottrell, president of NUI Galway, who was speaking for the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities.

The president of UCC, Prof Gerry Wrixon, described it as "a cause for celebration and sheer joy for the science and technology research community."