PRESIDENT'S LOG:In the US, China, India, Germany – all countries that have been negotiating the recession with some success – investment in research and innovation has increased, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

RECENTLY I attended a workshop organised by the IDA that addressed the relationship between universities and industry, looking at how this could be harnessed for the future development of the Irish economy. The event allowed senior university officers to talk informally with senior business leaders in an open forum. But more importantly, it highlighted how Ireland’s opportunities to attract new investment were critically dependent on research and innovation.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of one of the most important initiatives undertaken in recent times: the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI). Most people probably have no idea what this is, but it can be summed up very easily: it’s this country’s future.

Before 1999, no Irish university had a research profile that would have made an international impact. There were individual researchers of note, but due to the lack of resources, the impact of Irish research in international terms was negligible, and if there had been global rankings back then, not a single Irish university would have been in the top 300.

PRTLI was conceived through a partnership between government, the universities and Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies, which provided a major part of the funding. The first cycle, worth €206 million, was announced in 1999, and this has been followed by three more cycles; proposals for a fifth are currently being evaluated. This money has paid for vital research infrastructure, giving Ireland the laboratories, accommodation and facilities to host world-leading research in the sciences, humanities and social sciences.

The PRTLI investment was followed up with investment in the research councils, providing support in the humanities and social sciences on the one hand, and engineering and science on the other. Then there was the major investment opened up by Science Foundation Ireland, facilitated by the government’s Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, which has created some large-scale research and development partnerships between universities and industry.

But the real significance of this investment lies in how it has presented Ireland as a home for global innovation. And this takes me back to the IDA. Most of the key investments that the IDA has attracted to Ireland over the past few years would not have come

at all but for the research culture that we have created. And because we can no longer credibly look for new investment in low-skills manufacturing or call centres, this is our future. If we drop our emphasis on high-value research, we are committing economic suicide.

You think I’m exaggerating? Let me tell you a true story. In 2002, when there were some temporary public expenditure concerns, the government “paused” PRTLI, putting it on hold and freezing its investment in the programme. The impact was immediate. Just after the “pause”, I was at a workshop in the US on investment in innovation- intensive industries. A representative from an Asian country suggested that Ireland had decided not to develop an innovation economy and that such investment was better directed in Asia. At about the same time, I was involved in an attempt to persuade a major multinational to bring a high-value initiative to Ireland which would have created a lot of jobs. We were unable to complete the deal, because the company was no longer convinced that Ireland had a strategy for such investments or could support them. The PRTLI “pause” ended shortly afterwards, but it was too late for that initiative.

And now that we are in a recession, what has been happening? In the US, China, India, Germany – in fact, in all countries that have been negotiating the recession with some success – investment in research and innovation has increased, in some cases dramatically.

And what are we doing? I don’t know yet, but I am horribly nervous. The McCarthy report (“An Bord Snip Nua”) included a reference to PRTLI. I accept that public spending needs to be controlled, and that universities cannot be excepted. But what the report said about the impact of research was extraordinarily stupid. It suggested there was no evidence that research investment had produced economic benefits. The evidence to the contrary is there by the truckload. PRTLI laid the foundations for most of the investments that have come here over the past decade, as well as many of the start-ups that have come from within Ireland.

We now have a clear choice – go back to being the economic backwater we were 20 years ago, or continue to move forward. If we want the latter, we need world- class innovation and research. If we decide otherwise, we are sending a clear message to the global business community: if you want to invest in the new industries, don’t do it in Ireland.

We have made huge strides, and can achieve new prosperity by remaining at the cutting edge of innovation. So let’s keep investing in research, not for the benefit of academics, but because that’s where our future lies. We have already shown great imagination in this. For heaven’s sake, lets not throw that away.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University