"Historic" was a word that kept popping up in speeches at the launch of the new £560 million Foresight Foundation. While most were a bit self-conscious about using this overworked adjective, on this occasion it seemed wholly appropriate.
More than 150 academics, industrialists and civil servants involved in the State's research and technology infrastructure assembled yesterday to hear the Tanaiste give details of the Government's plans for our industrial future. They heard how the funding would be used to make Ireland a world-class player in two key research areas, biotechnology and information and computer technology.
The sums being quoted - £1.95 billion for science and technology in the National Development Plan, £560 million for the foresight initiative, another £550 million for research via the Higher Education Authority (HEA) - used to be tossed around when politicians were talking about road building or drainage works. Now they were being applied to the high-tech world of research.
The Government has embarked on a determined effort to shift us off our current industrial track of attracting big international companies which provide lots of low to medium-tech industrial jobs, towards the next tier up, high-value jobs at the very heart of the emerging technologies of the future.
Ms Harney stated this view quite clearly during yesterday's presentations. "The new fund is an integral part of the Government's new industrial development strategy. It will be used to develop Ireland as a dynamic location for innovation, particularly in the technologies of tomorrow."
The investment will reposition Ireland as a world centre for research, she said. "In the past we have followed others. Now we can be trailblazers."
The big question is, will it work? Do we have the skills and the human resources to pull it off? The Government, to its credit, led by the efforts of Ms Harney and the Minister of State for Science, Technology and Commerce, Mr Noel Treacy, believes that we can and has put up the money to prove it.
Much will depend on the recommendations of the 10-person implementation group which will map out the new body's structures. The team will have just three months to define the structures and determine what type of people are needed to make the foundation work.
The team will be chaired by Mr Paul Haran, secretary general of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and will include a high-powered group which covers industry, academia and the political dimensions of government.
It includes Mr Brian Sweeney, chairman of Siemens Group Ireland and the deputy chair of the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation. He headed the ICSTI group which delivered the Technology Foresight Initiative report upon which the Government's decision to provide the £560 million was based.
The chief executive of Forfas, Mr John Travers, will represent that body and Mr Frank McCabe, former head of Intel in Ireland, is also a member of the group. Others include Mr Frank Gannon, former food research scientist at NUI Cork and now with the European Molecular Biology Organisation; Mr Don Thornhill, chair of the HEA; Dr Jim Flanagan of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development; Prof Gerry Wrixon, president of UCC; and Prof Michael Murphy of the Health Research Board. The tenth member, yet to be confirmed, will represent the Department of Public Enterprise.
One decision which neither the group nor the new foundation will have to make relates to the more than £50 million allocated from the fund to the planned Media Lab Europe (MLE) facility to be established in Dublin jointly with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The funding was pushed through by the Department of the Taoiseach, and although the money will come out of the fund's budget, control of this resource will be external to the proposed foundation. Ms Harney defended this decision, suggesting that it was important to get the MLE project up and running quickly. The State, she added, would be able to retain control over the intellectual property generated by the MLE.
The Tanaiste acknowledged that there had been "a lot of lobbying" prior to yesterday's announcement. A vigorous campaign was waged against the possibility that the fund might be used to create off-campus institutes.
The Government's decision to rely on internationally recognised peer-review practices when allocating funding should go a long way towards calming any fears by academics. Research proposals will be judged on their merits and if they are not good enough they will not be funded.