Investment in the knowledge economy is the key to Ireland's continuing success, according to Frank Gannon, director general of Science Foundation Ireland, writes Dick Ahlstrom
THE GOVERNMENT HAS so far spent more than €1 billion over seven years in an attempt to create a knowledge economy here, but how will we know if and when it arrives? Research funder Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), a body that has helped spend large chunks of that money, is trying to answer that question.
Internal and independent external assessments are underway that will help determine whether the money was well spent or was just a costly misadventure.
SFI's director general Dr Frank Gannon is in no doubt about results of these assessments. He sees clear signs of steady progress since the SFI research money started to flow in 2001, and he has hard data to back up his view.
He took over as head of SFI last July, so he has had ample opportunity to gauge Ireland's research performance in close detail over the past year. And he has a very clear idea of what marker will tell us the investment in science is delivering a result. It all comes down to Business Expenditure on Research and Development (Berd), Gannon believes. "If we are doing our job well, we are contributing to Berd growth. If Berd is not going up we are not in a knowledge economy."
Businesses conducting RD either in-house or in collaboration with academia will show up in the Berd figure, and the numbers help to show whether the big investments going into science here are having a downstream effect. It can be considered a key metric of success in efforts to become a knowledge economy.
It also stands as an independent assessment of performance given private-sector investment is a matter for the company, not for those attempting to promote research here. "We cannot make these companies do the research. This is an independent adjudication of whether Ireland is doing well," Dr Gannon says.
He believes that all the numbers are moving in the right direction, pointing out that multinational companies spent about €100 million on research in 2005, a form of investment that was almost non-existent in the mid-to-later 1990s. That figure had risen to €400 million by 2007, however, and gives every indication of continuing to grow.
The primary objective of State investment in research is "capacity building", he says, increasing the numbers of PhD graduates, building world-class labs and research centres and creating new knowledge that might feed into enterprise.
The Government has set a goal of doubling the output of PhDs by 2013 and efforts are under way to achieve this. "It is not just doubling for the sake of doubling. It is an important comparator when looking at other jurisdictions. If you are a low-tech country, you don't need as many; if you are high tech, you do."
Another good indicator is the number of non-Irish scientists seeking to pursue research opportunities available here. About 28 per cent of all SFI awards for research investigators are to non-Irish nationals who choose to come here because they like what they see, Dr Gannon says.
Other numbers provide glimpses of performance. Research activities funded by SFI yielded 82 patents in 2007, up from about 60 in 2006 and 47 in 2005. Seven spin-out companies formed from research activity and there was a significant migration of researchers from Irish labs into industry.
Last year saw about 200 post-doctoral research fellows complete projects, with about 40 moving straight into industry. Of the 116 PhDs that completed their studies, about 32 went into industry.
A "leveraging" effect is also apparent, with SFI financial support helping to bring in additional outside funds and boost researcher numbers, Dr Gannon says. SFI currently funds about 550 groups and directly supports about 2,500 researchers. "The total amount of new funding these groups brought in was about €500 million," he says, with SFI contributing about half of this.
The extra money provides for extra researchers, so the total number of researchers in these SFI funded groups is actually about 5,000. "The number doubles when you include the full team. It gives you an idea of the leveraging effect SFI is helping to deliver," Gannon says.
Linkages with multinationals should continue to push figures for Berd. If large and small research-driven companies can see that their businesses might benefit from access to Irish labs, they will make further investment here. And the more this happens the closer we will be to a knowledge economy, he says.