The second round offers for third level college places, issued by the Central Applications Office on Monday, carry a serious warning message for the economy. There has been a huge downturn in applications for engineering courses and the points requirement has fallen in proportion.
To take some examples: students may now take electrical engineering at UCC with 335 points (400 in round one); engineering at DIT will take 315 points (350 in round one); the diploma course in biomedical engineering at the Cork Institute of Technology requires 285 points (360 in round one). The apparent flight from engineering matches a falloff in demand for places on computer courses which has been detectable for some years.
Perhaps it has been said so often that it has lost its impact: the strength of the Irish economy and the maintenance of high levels of employment depend on our capacity to supply a highly-educated workforce. The multinational companies which lead the information technology sector require graduates in engineering, computers and science. A spokesman for one of these recently declared on radio that his organisation was in Ireland because of two things, the educated workforce and in order to have access to Europe.
If present trends continue, that workforce of engineers, computer scientists and others will not be there in sufficient numbers in a very few years. If Ireland effectively votes itself out of a new Europe, future investment is certain to go elsewhere, perhaps to more recent members of the EU, with lower operating costs. If both of these things happen, our high-tech centres could be as empty, in time, as the abandoned mills and mines that once brought prosperity to Victorian England.
The Government is aware of the problem and there is growing concern among the State agencies which are charged with attracting inward investment. A working party was set up to examine the situation and the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, is due to report to the Cabinet later this month on possible measures to be taken. These will need to be imaginative and they will have to be implemented swiftly. A country needs its lawyers, its marketeers, its teachers - its journalists, indeed. But when it lives by open trade, as Ireland does, it needs above all else to manufacture and export high-quality goods that the world wants to buy.