Sir, – Greg Foley (August 8th) makes the point that there is a need for an informed and disinterested view on the pros and cons of investing in different types and areas of research activity.
As former policy analysts and advisers on science, technology and innovation, we would like to note that analysis and advice of at least a relatively independent nature were continuously available from the 1960s right up to 2014, when the policy functions of Forfás were integrated into the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.
The practice of independent analysis and advice in this area goes back to the publication of the Science & Irish Economic Development report in 1966, followed by the setting up of the National Science Council (NSC). The NSC was followed by a number of successor organisations, including the National Board for Science and Technology, Eolas – the Irish Science and Technology Agency, and Forfás, with its advisory council on science, technology and innovation. All of these maintained a significant connection with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
An independent policy analysis and advisory function has now virtually disappeared with the abolition of Forfás and we have dismantled the long-standing infrastructure that could have been relied on to address (if not fully answer) the current conundrums in this area.
Much of the policy machinery, as well as the applied research and technology transfer capacity of the State, has been whittled away since the early 1990s and has been replaced with an ad hoc, incremental system which itself cries out for a consistent and critical policy approach.
In a submission to the ongoing review of science, technology and innovation being carried out by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, we have proposed that the OECD be invited to advise not just on how our national science, technology and innovation activities should be organised and funded but also how our policy analysis and advisory function could best be re-established to meet our increasingly complex 21st-century needs. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT O’DOHERTY,
MICHAEL FITZGIBBON,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.