The Government is preparing to invest more than £50 million in a computer research laboratory being promoted by a US university. The move is expected to attract controversy as the money will come from the £560 million Technology Foresight fund, yet the body charged with allocating this spending has yet to be set up.
The spending plans are contained in a Cabinet decision of February 22nd and circulated to Government departments six days later. It proposes investing more than £50 million in the Media Research Lab, a project being promoted here by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and announced by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, last December.
The Cabinet will tomorrow finalise details relating to the investment and its plans for the Technology Foresight fund, according to a Government source. It is understood that the issue led to a vigorous Cabinet debate and an unexpected number of Ministers intervened in the discussion. It is understood the decision from that Cabinet meeting took an inordinate amount of time to complete. "One can only surmise that someone had difficulties with the original wording," according to a source which has seen the decision.
An eight-person implementation body to be chaired by a representative of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the sponsoring Department for the initiative, is to be announced. This group will have three months to advise on the establishment of a foundation to oversee Foresight spending, according to Government sources.
Once established, the foundation will have about £60 million to allocate this year. The Media Lab investment decision has already been made by Cabinet, however, and unless changed at tomorrow's meeting, takes this out of the hands of the body meant to be overseeing the fund.
It is bound to cause consternation among third-level researchers here who have campaigned vigorously for the investment to be made in existing research laboratories rather than in standalone institutes, the approach favoured by many in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and in Forfas.
The decision, if implemented, will be a bitter blow to Irish re searchers as the Media Lab project is being promoted by MIT. Based in Boston, the university is one of the leading research institutes in the US and is home to the original Media Lab which carries out advanced research in all aspects of computing.
Media Lab Europe was announced in December and is meant to work independently from its US base. Its promoters claim it will attract some £130 million in funding over 10 years and, when launched, the Government had promised to provide £28 million of this. The Foresight fund is the largest sum to be allocated to scientific research in the history of the State. It forms part of the £1.9 billion which the State plans to spend on science over the seven-year life of the National Development Plan.
The £560 million was recommended after a year-long Technology Foresight Exercise con ducted by the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation on behalf of Forfas. Its role was to look ahead 15 years to establish how Ireland could make the most from the emerging high-tech industries.
It recommended that £560 million be put aside to develop world-class research capabilities in computing and biotechnology.
