RAISING RESEARCH budgets, not cutting them, is the route to economic recovery, EU research and innovation commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn has said.
She was speaking yesterday in Brussels in advance of the opening of Europe’s largest science meeting, the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), which this year takes place in Turin.
“With budgets under pressure, governments may view RD as an easy area for cutbacks so now is exactly the wrong moment to remove this discipline,” she said.
“We know from the experiences of countries like Finland that raising RD budgets is the route to recovery.”
Asked about the dangers given that Ireland’s research spend is falling significantly behind planned expenditure, she said that “without sufficient investment in RD, the potential to create sustainable growth and jobs cannot be realised”. She added, however, she was confident that the Government realised this.
She has already begun a campaign to encourage member states to boost investment in RD to 3 per cent of gross domestic product.
This was the figure set within Europe’s 2020 research strategy. Ireland’s investment currently stands at about 1.68 per cent of GDP.
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said that she was working with her Commission colleagues to develop an “Innovation Union Strategy”, a research and innovation strategy for the EU that was due to be launched this autumn. The strategy would help to create sustainable growth and replace jobs lost in the recent economic crisis, she said.
She believes that it can be used to tackle the “grand challenges” facing the EU including climate change, food and energy security, improving people’s health and dealing with an ageing society.
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn had planned to attend the Turin conference but pulled out yesterday after her doctor recommended she rest after contracting a minor illness.
The ESOF is due to be staged in Dublin in 2012 after a successful bid by Ireland.
Minister of State for Science and Innovation Conor Lenihan described it as the “Olympics of science” given it would attract scientists from all over the world and afford an opportunity to showcase Ireland’s achievements as a smart economy.
“Science and technology are at the heart of the Government’s economic recovery plan and investors continue to have confidence in Ireland’s RD infrastructure,” he said yesterday.
He said he would be taking direct charge of the event in the two-year run-up to 2012 and would use it to help promote a better public understanding of the importance of the research investment.
The ESOF meeting gets into full swing today, with public talks given by leading research scientists and entertaining family science events planned for right across Turin. The Irish Timeswill carry daily reports from Monday through Thursday.
The meeting closes next Wednesday with a formal handover of the city of science title from Turin to Dublin.
The Government’s chief scientific adviser, Prof Patrick Cunningham, headed the campaign to win the 2012 city of science and ESOF meeting for Dublin and Ireland.