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SCIENCE NATION
‘We’ve had good support in the form of sponsorship wherewe’ve asked for it.We’ve had good support in the uptake of exhibition space’
Everybody will go away, we hope, thinking that was very well done and those people knowwhat they’re about.” The organisers are also hoping that
Ireland’s interactionwith businesswill be evident. “We have an exceptional platform of international hi-tech busi- ness in this country and we hope that many of them will be there in person and some of them with stands, and some contributing to sessions.” Businesses in the science, technol-
ogy and research space have been broadly supportive of the initiative, he says. “We’ve had good support in the
As part of Dublin’s City of Science designation, this year’s St Patrick’s Day Parade had a science theme
formof sponsorshipwherewe’ve asked for it. We’ve had good support in the uptake of exhibition space. And we hope we’ll have good support in the presence of practising people from these companies at ESOF.”
LONG-TERM STRATEGY According to Cunningham, hosting the conference is part of a long-termstrat- egy in Ireland of making the country economically competitive in theworld, something that essentially startedwith theWhitaker paper back in the 1950s. “Then we went through opening the doors and inviting in people and pro- viding cheap labour. In the early 1970s we set up the institutes of technology to train peoplewho’d left school so they could do the things that were needed in these manufacturing plants. “Then in the 1990s, we realised we needed to become more sophisticated
18 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2012
andwe had tomovewith these compa- nies or they’dmove out of here. There’s a succession of economic policy that underlies all of this and what’s been done in the last 10 years has been to add a layer of over 3,000 professional research scientists to our university system, all essentially funded by Sci- ence Foundation Ireland and parallel moneywith themission of doing things that will be of interest to these inter- national companies, who are the most scientifically sophisticated companies in theworld. The great advantage to us is that they bring capital here and they bring a market connection here. “We’re leading that march into the
future because if we stay where we were in the 1980s or 1990s or even 10 years ago, then the country’s going to be wallowing in the lower end of the league. That’s the context and that’s why this is important.”
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