The new Government's arrangements for science and technology were "fundamentally flawed and unworkable", according to the former minister of state for commerce, science and technology, Mr Pat Rabbitte.
"The Office of Science and Technology, it would appear, is to be broken up: one part to service a junior Minister with out a role and the other to service a policy without a Minister," Mr Rabbitte said. He suggested that the integrated approach to science and technology, pieced together by a succession of administrations, was to be replaced with something incoherent.