In my opinion: The importance of universities can't be ignored
Universities in Ireland play a major and unique role in Irish society, particularly in the area of economic development. I am a statistician by training, so I have a healthy scepticism of the use of figures to justify one case or another.
What I want to do instead is to tell you just two stories that I feel substantiate my belief.
Firstly, I want to tell you about a company called Powervation. If you haven't already heard of it, you will soon. It has already made a significant impact and secured €20m in venture capital from Intel Capital and Scottish Equity Partners for pioneering a new class of digital power control solutions.
Employing 35 staff at offices in Limerick, Palo Alto and Taipei, it was recently awarded the Irish Technology Leadership Group Innovation Award in Silicon Valley in recognition of its transformative technology and its capability to build a strong global business.
This entire development originated in UL's Circuits & Systems Research Centre, where the work of faculty and researchers led to the establishment of Powervation in 2006, with UL taking an equity position.
The founders and many of the staff are UL alumni and the research in UL labs has laid the foundations for what seems sure to grow into an excellent hi-tech enterprise.
The second story I want to tell is of our interaction with the major alumina producer Aughinish Alumina which has a vast facility in Co Limerick. Aughinish committed €5m to a collaborative partnership with UL that has delivered major efficiency and productivity gains for the company.
Aughinish was subsequently taken over and has been kept open while similar factories closed around the world, in large part because of the efficiencies, based on innovations developed with UL.
Every Irish university has similar stories. In many instances it is difficult to define the role played by universities in the innovation process.
A further dimension of the unique role of universities has just been announced. The UL Foundation has forged a partnership with Bank of Ireland, Kernel Capital and Enterprise Ireland to launch a €2m Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund to invest in start-up and early stage companies.
I believe Irish universities have consistently delivered a positive return on the investment made by the State. Despite -- if not indeed because of -- the current difficulties, I believe there is a need for greater investment to build on the foundations we have put in place for the Knowledge Economy. If we continue to focus on the cost of universities -- instead of measuring their yield and the relative value of the State's Return of Investment -- we miss the whole point of what universities do, how this can benefit current and future generations. In this time of crisis we need to think and act strategically to determine how we should invest our reduced resources to best effect.
Irish Independent
