Has Máire Geoghegan-Quinn's position as DG Research Innovation made any difference to our research agenda?

SCIENCE:COULD IT GET any better? A country with big ambitions about building a knowledge economy based on scientific research whose EU Commissioner wins the research portfolio? Sweet. But has that coup delivered about two years ago with the appointment of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn to DG Research, Innovation and Science, made any difference at all to our research agenda?

Certainly she is in a position of importance within the Commission. Research and innovation are meant to deliver discoveries leading to company spin-outs that in turn lead to jobs, growth and exports. “She holds this post when all of the EU strategy is directed towards developing a smart economy,” one Brussels-based source commented.

It is important to realise that as a commissioner she is not allowed to favour Ireland in any way. Commissioners are discouraged from referring in speeches to “my country”, using instead phrases such as “the country I know best”. President José Manuel Barroso wants commissioners to erect Chinese Walls with their past and stay clear of home politics.

This she seems to have pursued assiduously, avoiding comment on the pressing fiscal matters in Brussels, but also shunning reference to things back home such as the banking collapse or the euro zone crisis.

“She hasn’t moved out of her portfolio to become someone who speaks on the debt crisis,” the source said.

She has not seen fit to become a commentator on the financial issues, as have some other commissioners and so, in a sense, she has become eclipsed by events. It is difficult to be heard with the clamour of the euro crisis so shrill. “She has given speeches, but no one will read a speech on research or science when we have what is going on in the financial crisis. Research is happening in slow motion behind the scenes,” the source said.

Despite this, she continues to press forward her role as research commissioner. Her speeches talk of Horizon 2020, the EU research funding programme that replaces the Framework Programme. She regularly comments on the potential for Ireland and for all countries to benefit from the funding as a way to boost jobs and development. And she can deliver that message with gusto.

“Europe faces a debt crisis, certainly, but above all it is a growth crisis. The battle for growth has begun. Everything depends on it. No stone can remain unturned, no sector left untouched, certainly not research which is the lifeblood of the knowledge economy,” she declared at the end of last month. Stirring stuff.

It plays well at home and the Government is foursquare behind her, despite the mismatch of party loyalties.

Ireland was “very lucky” to have her in the portfolio, Minister of State for Research and Innovation Sean Sherlock said when asked for his view. “As Research Minister, I feel that her open approach will serve scientific and societal outputs extremely well.”

Sections of the research community here are also well disposed to her. The Irish Research Staff Association got in touch hoping for her involvement in its session on “the diversity of Careers for Researchers” to take place next July at the Euroscience Open Forum meeting in Dublin. She agreed to dispatch Patricia Reilly, a member of her cabinet, to participate in their event. Her DG had “a very constructive approach to research policy”, the association’s chair Dr John Walsh said.

There are commentators, of course, who are less enamoured with her performance, some holding the view that she “has done nothing” with her portfolio, a Brussels-based source said. She delivers the speeches, but “she is not comfortable in a science environment. She could be doing an awful lot more.”

There are also claims that she has remained fiercely loyal to her political roots. “She is very tight with all the old Fianna Fáil apparatchiks,” the source said. “She still says she is a politician, but you can’t get votes in this game.”

There are also suggestions that she has not cultivated connections with the media and “mistrusts the press”, and this may have served to dampen down reportage on her DG. With the fiscal crisis blowing strongly overhead it is a matter of hunkering down and keeping out of the storm. “ is very much more inward looking now. It is not looking outward to develop innovation and collaboration,” the source said.

Government officials tend to argue, how- ever, that at civil servant level the connections between the Berlaymont in Brussels and Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in Kildare Street could not be better. And Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is a doughty combatant who knows how to get what she wants in the mêlée that is Brussels.