Madam, - The recent media debate criticising UCD for the poaching of academic staff has specifically mentioned my move from TCD to UCD (September 1st) and the purpose of this letter is to set the record straight. I have worked for 23 years in Trinity and in that time have developed a very significant presence in the international arena of nutrition research.
I have been very happy working in TCD but recognised more than a decade ago that Trinity could never rival University College Cork or the University of Ulster in nutrition research, because nutrition, or indeed the broader subject of food and health, is not a priority subject for TCD. It does not have the "critical mass" to be a priority because it is too small with just three academic staff and I have very happily lived with that fact in my time in TCD. During my time as dean of research I supported, and still do, the concept that a university cannot grow everything and therefore must prioritise its infrastructural investment. About five years ago, recognising the limitations within TCD to the growth of my subject, I responded to an advertisement for a chair in UCD in the food area but withdrew my application prior to interview. Senior colleagues in TCD were aware of my application and were fully sympathetic to my wishes to be part of a larger, more vibrant academic grouping in food, nutrition and health. Since then several significant events have occurred in UCD.
Professor Shea Fanning moved from CIT and Professor Pat Wall moved from FSAI, both in food safety and Professor Cecily Kelleher moved from NUI Galway in public health medicine with a special interest in nutrition. Last year, UCD furthered its interest in developing nutrition as an academic discipline by appointing a lecturer in the subject who would work alongside its well-established and internationally competitive research groups in food science, food safety and food biosystems.
Earlier this year, UCD identified a number of strategically important research themes, of which one was food and health. The landscape for nutrition in UCD had therefore changed.
In the spring, UCD advertised for a number of posts in these strategic themes including posts in public health nutrition and nutrigenomics and I submitted an application according to the instructions in the advertisement.
I was interviewed by a panel and then interviewed by the president of UCD and a recommendation to appoint me as chair of food and health went before the appropriate committee. I was offered the post at a salary equal to existing UCD professorial levels and I accepted the post. That is not poaching.
The Irish Times chose to sensationalise this move on the front page last June, much to my personal detriment in TCD. Contrary to the views of some, UCD had no role whatsoever in this. The large cadre of outstanding staff who will transfer with me to UCD are 100 per cent employed on national and international research grants which I have won through open competition and thus are not funded by the annual grant to TCD from the Government. The idea that the Irish universities would create a charter to block career moves such as mine is laughable. University staff move all the time and occasionally - and not in my case - move without any formal advertisement or competition. In the US, movement of academic staff is very commonplace and competition between US universities for Nobel laureates is legendary.
Within all this brouhaha is an inference that inter-university collaboration is the new order of the day. In my subject, it is old hat. In the area of nutrition research, the three academic nutrition units on the island of Ireland (UCC, TCD and UU) have collaborated for the last 15 years as the Irish University Nutrition Alliance (IUNA) (www.iuna.net). In every year of its existence, IUNA has enjoyed significant bilateral or trilateral national and international collaborative research.
Five years ago, a "joint" M.Sc. in food regulatory affairs was launched, fully internet delivered. This highly successful degree still operates despite any agreement between Irish universities on joint degrees.
More such "joint" degrees are planned in the food and health area, hopefully with some level of inter-university agreement on their governance.
My move to UCD to head up a new centre for food and health will do nothing to diminish my commitment to collaborative research and teaching.
Regularly, in the columns of The Irish Times, Dr Danny O'Hare, former president of DCU, has called for a formal visionary document and framework for action to be developed by the Irish university sector. Better that than accords which limit the freedom of academics to move to new posts where their research potential can be maximised. Isn't that the objective or have I missed something? I hope that this has set the record straight and that I can be let get on with my job. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL J GIBNEY, Frascati Park, Blackrock, Dublin.