11th December 1997

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Dozens of high-calibre research in Northern Ireland have been lost in recent months and more are expected to follow unless the Government reverses its cuts in research funding to the two universities here.

That is the stark warning from University of Ulster's Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research, Professor Gerry McKenna.

Professor McKenna has disclosed that both this university and Queen's University, Belfast have had to 'release' a substantial number of research staff in recent months as their three-year contracts came up for renewal. He said the funds to keep them in place are no longer available.

"At a time when we're trying to rebuild the Northern Ireland economy, when we're trying to attract the kind of high technology inward investment on which the future of the province depends, to be cutting the research base is extremely short-sighted."

The research cuts for Northern Ireland's universities were announced last year by Sir Patrick Mayhew, at a time when the Government was increasing by 7% the amount of research funding available to universities in the rest of the UK.

The cuts also undermine the conclusions of the Government's Technology Foresight exercise which explored how the Northern Ireland industrial and business sector should develop in the future. After years of investigation, the exercise recommended that research work should be encouraged in the fields of life and health technologies, food and drink, engineering, computer networks and systems, textiles and apparel, and software development. These are all areas in which university-based research activity is crucial to the growth of public and private sector enterprises.

This is not the way to go, declares Professor McKenna:

"If we want to strengthen the Northern Ireland economy; if we want to implement the results of the Government's own Technology Foresight initiative; if we want to attract inward investment and encourage high technology start-up companies, we have to understand that all of those things depend crucially on the quality of the research base in our two universities.

"To be faced with a 16% cut in research funding at a time when other regions of the UK are having their research funding increased is not the way to achieve these objectives.

The two universities here represent 64% of the research base in the province - a figure far in excess of any other region of the UK. And because Northern Ireland's industrial and commercial base has a high proportion of SMEs (Small to Medium Sized Enterprises), university research is even more important, as the private sector undertakes only a minority of the R&D work carried on in the province.

Cuts in research funds have debilitating long term effects on the economy, added Professor McKenna: "You can't simply switch research on and off like a light bulb. Research programmes take years to complete; you need to build up teams of people with the right expertise in the field. That knowledge base is hard to build, easy to destroy, and extremely difficult to reconstruct after you lose the people with the expert knowledge and skills you need to carry out world class research."

"It is a squandering of talent. You build up an area of expertise, you nurture it until it is world class, and then suddenly the funding dries up. We need more world class research units in Northern Ireland, not fewer. "

For further information, please contact:

Press Office Department of Communication and Development
Telephone: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk