“There are clear opportunities for further collaboration between the universities in Ireland supported at the highest level.

But I remain concerned.

I remain concerned, because in my own view, the Irish state agencies – and in particular Science Foundation Ireland – have insufficiently focussed on the opportunity to translate world class research undertaken in Ireland into innovative products and services for the global market. In my view, Science Foundation Ireland is myopically focussed on Science: but what we also need – perhaps need even more – is a focus on Engineering. Ireland needs to take the most interesting scientific results globally available to engineer innovative new products and services for the world market.

And:

I am surprised and disappointed that SFI seems to think it can be just a shipyard launching ships, rather than an admiral not only building ships, but leading a complementary and mutually re-enforcing cohesive fleet to take on the world.”

Chris Horn is, I’m sure, know to you all…..

Quote 1 -
“Those saying that David’s optimisim is naieve need to assess what the alternative is. We’re not going to get anywhere by curling up and waiting to economically die.”

Quote 2 -
“This 500M is actually an unmanageable sum for any R&D/ S&T stimulus in this country. I believe we will resort to consultants spending it for us. Roughly speaking we are talking about coordinating 4500 man years without anything solid behind it. There is no workprogram to speak of and you’ll need about 400 people to manage it (whatever it is). The goals and objectives have to be simple and clear or it;s just more wasted nonsense.”

These two quotes are the nub of the issue, IMO.

I started off being very sceptical of the ‘programme’ especially as it has been written by a seconded academic (look at the details on the press release to see the name of the original author). I continued to be sceptical until I read David’s take. I agree with the sentiment, the Whitaker link, the Israel link, etc., BUT I think that that sort of thinking and policy making background was the norm at the time of Whitaker, but doesn’t work now; for the reasons given in the quotes….

In quote 1, yes we need to do the thinking but unfortunately the reality is in the second part of the quote – not by ‘us’ curling up but our government – viz the bank ‘bailout’

In quote 2, that is the other reality, it will be used up by consultants, that is the way things are, there are no Whitakers any more. The civil service doesn’t have anybody who can understand this sort of thing, so they second academics and employ consultants to write the work specs for other consultants to work off. David, can you confirm this? you are a consultant. I am too, it has certainly been my experience. I note that David was in Reunion (wasn’t it?) consulting, I’ll bet it wasn’t another consultant who wrote the spec.

I am reading Patterson’s book on Ireland since 1938, his historians take on Whitaker/Lemass is rather more cleared eyed than most…..

Don’t get me wrong, as a scientist I want it to work; as a realist I’m not so sure it will.

Bye, Barry

Until then we will live by the maxim “when you hear the OFFICIAL denial, then you will know with complete certainty, that rumours ARE true”. The most hilarious case of the official denials in recent months being the denials issued by Minister Coughlan concerning FAS, before the FAS board were exposed as a bunch of wasters. Or Lenihan’s attempts ‘to instill confidence in the soundness of the Irish Banking system’ before confidence completely collapsed.

The behaviour of investors and markets as changed. When they hear politicians trying to talk something up, provide reassurances, of just go blank about the economy, then this is taken as a signal that there is something seriously flawed about the whole thing.

Really, we should stop behaving as a nation in a manner befitting the “Beverly Hillbillies”, and start using our resources carefully and sensibly. Instead we have these massive, idiotic bailouts from a country that is serious financial trouble. We had the builders bailout (an attempt to subsidize builders, by establishing a price floor for badly finished houses). We had the financial regulator banning the practice of shortselling banks-when some of them were clearly worth 0. And now we have the bankers bailout. This reminds me of the silliest days of Michael Noonan as FG leader, when bailouts were being issued to everybody in the audience.

soldiersofdestiny – you are correct concerning our ‘censorship’ level libel laws. Look at the behaviour of CJH when he was in a position of power, and the truth only emerged long after he retired. We have ridiculous libel laws. But I detect that some media organs provide filtered versions of what is happening. Also I detect that there is a massive difference in economic analysis in the two main Irish newspapers. I am very critical of the IT, because it’s entire economic commentary since the mid 1990s could be termed fictional. There is an article six weeks ago about the cheif of the EBS – describing him in glowing terms, as yet another safe pair of hands, and a prudent banker. Eight days later Shane Ross in the Indo exposed the same EBS chief as con artist, applying the decription ‘clown’ five times. On the basis of track record, I would rate the opinion of Shane Ross as spot on. Then there was the FAS story. The Sindo broke the story. And in preceding weeks Shane Ross and Nick Webb had been firing shots at FAS. But the IT issued the official denials and gave them far more weight. The headline in the IT was always based on the response of Minister Coughlan. Then the scandals were revealed. And the IT changed it’s coverage to save face. RTE’s coverage of the FAS debacle was exactly the same. After the Sindo broke the story, RTE and the IT tried to catch up with the story and get with the people’s anger.

Basically we need to differentiate between those that tell us the truth first, and those that tell us the truth when we already know it. The latter are not serving the public interest.

Then we need to look at the estimates the big consulting firms have given for project’s they’ve planned. Several of these have been way out and led to nasty surprises at the tax payer’s expense. I remember the national sports center debacle. Everytime the consultants had a look at it, the cost increased dramaticaly. If the media hadn’t latched onto that as a grand folly we’d still be paying for it.

We also need to look at the efficiencies and/or performance benefits achieved by each consultancy firm. We need some kind of accountability and traceability for the consultancy companies rather than guaranteed yearly hand outs from the state for being such lovely fellows and having such nice suits.