Growth in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries will be jeopardised if urgent action is not taken to encourage more students into both sectors, industry representatives have warned. These sectors currently require more than 750 staff.
More practical work in the laboratory was badly needed to get students to take subjects such as physics and chemistry in school, the industries concluded in a new report evaluating their needs.
However, the dilapidated state of school laboratories made this difficult, according to the Irish Pharmaceutical and Chemical Manufacturers Federation, which is part of IBEC.
The group said the low numbers taking physics and chemistry at Leaving Certificate level were "alarming". In 1987, 21 per cent of students took chemistry but this had dropped to 12.1 per cent by 1997.
These falls were leading to increasing staff shortages in pharmaceutical companies, said Mr Bryan Mohally, the federation's chairman and chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Jansen. Foreign-owned companies might think twice about setting up here if they could not be guaranteed a skilled pool of labour, he said.
Mr Matt Moran, director of the federation, said its report - Educating a Skilled Workforce - found that 755 staff were now required by both sectors, at a conservative estimate.
Mr Moran said Irish-based companies were already recruiting from abroad. Businesses had to market physics and chemistry to schoolchildren; where this had been done it proved very successful, he added.
Mr Mohally said the industry had to fight the perception that physics and chemistry were difficult subjects. Another problem was a lack of science teachers.