I continue the 'outreach' theme with this successor module to 1970s module, which linked to the Irish Times column. This is the present writer's continuation of JJ's outreach via the 'Barrington Lecture' process. It will be accessible from the 'Barrington' Appendix.

Public Transport in Dublin

A Critical Look at the EEC Common Agricultural Policy

Introduction

In what follows, we attempt a 'plain mans' guide'to how the present CAP works, summarise current strategic thinking in the Irish agricultural establishment on possible alternatives, and present a radical alternative which may be appropriate to current Irish (and other European fringe) conditions.

How CAP Works

The way the policy works is by subsidising agricultural production at the expense of the consumer. Prices of imported goods from countries outside the EEC are levied up to an artificial level, so that low-cost outside producers are unable to compete on price. Artificially maintained high prices however have the effect of encouraging larger volume production by industrial-scale agricultural producers (the 'concrete farmers' of John Healy). The agribusiness lobby has become wealthy and influential, with a vested interest in the maintenance of the status quo.

The net result is that some 73% of the EEC budget is taken up with the agricultural price maintenance budget, to the detriment of other budgets having progressive potential such as the Social Fund and the Regional fund, not to speak of the research and development fund, on which depends the long-term future of every State within the Community. These latter only account for 5.7%, 5.9% and 2.6% respectively.

Thus the CAP has become a monstrous imposition, generating unsaleable surpluses of perishable commodities, while enriching large-scale agri-business and achieving its original objective (ie supporting family farm incomes) only partially and inefficiently.

Irish Establishment Thinking

(a) Quota with super-levy (ie same as now only more so)
(b) Co-responsibility levy (surpluses paid for by producers; the Commission currently favours this)
(c) Free trade in agriculture with cash transfers under regional and social funds
(d) Input restriction (eg a tax on nitrogenous fertiliser)

A contribution by Fearghal O'Farrell develops the environmental implications of the third option, and shows signs of grudging support for the 'green option' developed below.

Both options (a) and (b) are unacceptable, since they are tied to the present policy of subsidy at the expense of the consumer; this policy also has the effect of depressing world prices outside the EEC, to the detriment of the economic development of third-world countries needing outlets for their produce.

Option (c), possibly along with option (d), could form the basis of a 'green alternative' policy. Option (d) came up in discussion at a meeting of the Irish Association for European Studies on Dec 4 last, addressed by Professor Seamus Sheehy of UCD. This policy, which in some ways is comparable to the tax on alcoholic drink, could be linked with regulation or total prohibition of intensive production procedures (eg feeding antibiotics and hormones as a routine, under stressed conditions), and with payment of farmers salaries as environment managers (this is in effect option (c)).

A further option under consideration in to increase the area under trees, with re-training of farmers as commercial forestry managers. There was a contribution along these lines by Carmel Kelleher to the conference proceedings. Typical small farmers on the continent manage as a matter of course small forests of 3-5 hectares as adjuncts to their holdings, giving useful local sources of hardwoods for the furniture industry, as well as fuel supplies.

Thus it would appear that the basic thinking necessary for a 'green alternative' to the CAP is beginning to break through in Irish agriculture, at least in theory among the research people.

The 'Green Alternative'

This movement is one of the most rapidly growing economic phenomena of contemporary Europe; we ignore it at our peril. The market fuelling its development is among those people who are prepared to pay extra for food that they know is free from antibiotic and pesticide residues. Markets pioneered by the 'health-food' shops are now being taken up by the supermarkets.

The problem is to ensure an efficient supply network, with continuity and effective quality guarantees. A framework for State recognition and supervision of this has been set up in some EEC States (including France and Germany); there exist organic growers' organisations in Britain and Ireland who are lobbying for the same level of recognition.

(It is important that the Irish 'biological agriculture' movement develop its own independent lobby to influence the mainstream farming organisations and the Irish Government, rather than tagging behind the British. I have seen signs of the latter in their publications.)

An important source-book for such a lobby is a European Parliament 'Working Document' A 2-207/85 (3/2/86) by F Roelants de Vivier (known for short as the Du Vivier Report).

This document is a mine of useful information for projecting a scenario in which the CAP would be replaced a combination of options (c) and (d) (ie social wage and restricted inputs).

Under 'biological agriculture' practice, the energy input per hectare is approximately halved (it is much easier to make a good tilth out of crumbly organic soil, already well worked over by earthworms; 'let the worms do the ploughing'). Labour input is about 25% higher per hectare (the quality of the labour is however enhanced: more decision-making and management, less mullocking, no dangerous chemicals). Yields per hectare are reduced, thus taking care of the surplus problem. The price situation can be summarised thus: at present (ie high) market price levels, organic produce carries a premium sufficient to give no effective reduction in income per head for those engaged in organic farming, as compared to those engaged in intensive practice. (This at first sight surprising result is achieved by substantial reduction of high-cost bought-in inputs.) Du Vivier gives comparative figures for conventional (ie intensive) and biological farms in Germany.

Under a revised CAP, with market prices allowed to settle at world free trade levels, and allowing free imports from third-world countries, the economic income would of course be much reduced. The social wage (ie salary to farmers as creative managers and conservers of the environment) would have to be fixed at a level such as to enable them to have an acceptable standard of living.

By these means, the family farm and the rural environment would be conserved (ie an end to pressure to grub out hedges and destroy wildlife habitats), and markets would be opened up for third-world countries as an aid to their development, at a cost to the EEC substantially less than the current CAP. Peripheral regions such as Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and southern Italy, which have significant rural populations, would stand to gain by such policies, and have an interest in combining to press for their elaboration. Also the urbanised working peoples in the central regions have an interest in a cheap food policy.

Science and Technology: the IIRS and the NBST

At the time of writing we still await the publication of the Review of the Institute of Industrial Research and Standards by the National Board for Science and Technology, as well as the outcome of the complex procedures for recruiting a new Chief Executive, and possible restructured top-management team.

The IIRS leadership crisis has been with us for some years now; the vacuum has been partially filled by Harold O'Sullivan the Chairman, who is likely to have to soldier on until the Minister, Mr Bruton, can see his way to defining some policy in the light of the NBST review, and making it known.

Before dismissing this process as an incestuous mutual review by semi-States, it is worth noting that the inputs to the NBST review were from sectoral working groups, manned by heavyweights, who had to give up time from front-line positions in industry. The people who did the work are beginning to mutter mutinously about delay and indecision.

The background to the leadership crisis goes back to the original appointment of Martin Cranley in 1963, and may be traced to the recruitment procedures as they then were. Cranley's background was physics, but in the context of basic research and teaching; he had risen to be Principal of Kevin St College of Technology. He had little or no industrial experience, and his management experience related to the academic system. To his credit he recruited some complementary assistance: Robin Nichol, who has been Deputy Director since the early days, at least had a track record in industrial chemistry, this in those remote days being the most visible sector of industrial applied science. This two-man team ran the show, with a somewhat centralist management style, until the present crisis, which was precipitated by ill-health, no doubt stress-enhanced, possibly due to a (Parkinsonian?) cost-overrun in the building programme.

I have been following, off and on, the growth of the IIRS since I returned from England in 1963. I had returned to Ireland from industrial process development work in London to help service the Aer Lingus/IBM honeymoon. I was therefore in a position to observe the process with some insights.

I remember remarking, in an Irish Times article in 1967, on the lack of IIRS linkages with the Colleges; this weakness, and others, were remarked on by Professor Tom Allen of MIT in 1970-71, in a series of papers, some of which I subsequently helped publicise in my Irish Times column.

Why is this 'college linkage' so crucial? Let me try to describe one aspect of the vicious circle that has Irish industry in decline, and then let me try and put virtue on it.

Managers are told that they must innovate, cut costs, improve quality, develop new products: all these processes require 'knowhow'. To do these things they must get themselves good knowhow-sources, preferably in-house: innovators, problem recognisers and solvers, problem-anticipators (better). Such people don't just happen, they have to be grown. However Irish industrial managements, on the rare occasions when they recruit, tend to require 'experience'; in other words they prefer to steal from other peoples gardens, an expensive and hazardous process, it turns out. Fortunately as a short-term alternative the IIRS is at hand, providing a subsidised problem-solving service. The IIRS staff has therefore undergone a period of subsidised expansion to service the demand arising from the lack of technological knowhow in small and medium Irish-based firms, without any mechanism being provided for the parallel enhancement of the firms' own innovation capacities.

If the College linkages had been stronger, the problem-solving processes could have been linked to a flow of industrially-sponsored MSc projects, thus providing a flow of young graduates into industry with head-starts into relevant technologies. The role of the IIRS-industry link would have been enhanced, its problem-solving work being a 'catalyst' for the transformation of young scientists and engineers into useful industrial technologists. No longer would industrial managements have to steal people from each others gardens; they could grow their own.

I devoted an appreciable fraction of my Irish Times column space in the period 1970-76 to the IIRS and its problems, including the Allen report and their reaction to it. The response was aggressively defensive, and little came of it. Subsequently, when engaged in developing the market for college-based applied research in TCD, we found ourselves, against our will, forced into a competitive position with regard to the IIRS, despite what appeared to us to be an evident opportunity for complementary reinforcement to the mutual advantage. The one co-operative venture we did initiate died of neglect.

So it is evident that with the IIRS 'ancien regime' there was little sense of dynamic management, or catalysis of human interactions. People were hierarchically arranged in a multiplicity of isolated boxes, with little attention paid to linkages, internal or external. Centralist small-firm management practice was unable to cope with expansion by a factor of 10 in two decades.

I happened to put some thoughts on paper towards a re-structuring of the IIRS, about 3 months ago, as a by-product of an information-technology concept on which I am currently working. In the following extract, readers should forgive me for using the shorthand abbreviation 'R and D' for 'research and development':

"Strategic Objectives:

1. To bring about an increase of overall private-sector cash flow into R and D, both in-house and bought-in.

2. To increase substantially the number of firms recruiting qualified S and T personnel and engaging in R and D, producing new products and new processes.

3. To gain an optimal share of the expanded R and D market, recognising that the two main IIRS 'competitors' (client-firm in-house R and D, and the 3rd-level postgraduate R and D system) are in fact synergistic with each other and with the IIRS.

"Methods

1. To strengthen the interfaces between IIRS, industry, other State research institutes and the 3rd-level system; specifically to disperse a greater proportion of the staff into high-profile accessible local contact-points, located in IDA/SFADCO-type 'enterprise/innovation centres' associated with College campuses.

2. To develop appropriate sectoral structures, both nationally and within the regional structure.

3. Making use of the high-profile, near-campus locations, to develop links at local level between industrial problem-solving, student placement, student project-definition and graduate recruitment by firms, regarded as stages in a dynamic process for upgrading firms' R and D capacity.

4. Given that this would involve substantial staff transfers and re-location, to involve the unions creatively, ab initio, in the transition; to facilitate staff wishing to make the transition to and from private industry, as well as to and from the Colleges (eg by mobile pension schemes etc).

5. To develop sectoral funding packages (via CII), whereby firms joining a sector 'R and D Association' (on the basis of a tax-deductible levy on turnover) gain the right to IIRS services at marginal cost."

I market-researched these concepts with several people associated with the working groups who had contributed to the NBST review (by the way, it was during these encounters that I picked up the rumbles of discontent over the delay in publication). I found that they were regarded as being compatible with review-group thinking.

In subsequent enquiries I found that current rumour appears to favour the 'locally accessible one-stop shop' concept but is less positive about the sectoral structure.

Management by rumour however is not my favourite technique. When are we going to get a system of rapid and well-informed decision-making?

Science/Technology/Innovation/Entrepreneurship

In my October contribution to New Hibernia I looked into the role of the Institute of Industrial Research and Standards in the innovation and technology transfer process. I now want to supplement this with some insights into the present and future potential role of the Universities and Colleges of Technology in this process.

In this, and hopefully in future, articles I hope to illuminate for a lay readership the human, social and political aspects underlying what is labelled 'innovation' or 'technology transfer', particularly where science is important, sometimes taking the process further in the direction of entrepreneurship. When I did this before (from 1970 to 1976 for the Irish Times) I got much of my input from conferences, not so much from star-speakers who got reported in the press as from the analysis of the subsequent discussions, both on the floor and in the bar afterwards. Some accused me of writing a 'scientific gossip-column', but they all read it.

When recently I went over the Irish Times material of a decade ago I found it possible to distill it (with a view to publication) into a structured approach to answering, in the Irish context, the question 'how do you transform scientific knowledge into social utility?' Alternatively, 'how does knowhow become jobs?'.

The problems I looked at then are mostly still with us. Many of them are subjective, embedded in the national psyche, after centuries of cultivated slave-mindedness. For example, the perceived meaning in the Irish context of the word 'entrepreneur' has a predatory flavour. After the Famine, gombeen-capitalists made money out of trading in the chattels of the emigrants. This persistent image is reinforced by modern speculation in urban land, asset-stripping, oil-share price manipulation, claim-jumping and all the rest of the goings-on reported on financial pages.

I want instead to develop the positive connotation of the word: bringing together resources with knowhow to satisfy needs, creating wealth and giving employment in the process. Entrepreneurship can be in various social forms: individual, co-operative, social, State. The question of the ownership of the viable enterprise is the raw material of politics. Whatever social form it takes, somewhere at the core of the viable enterprise is knowhow embedded in people.

In this spirit, let me comment on three recent events, two of which related to the 3rd-level system. These were: the annual Higher Education conference in the Burlington (Sept 17-18), the EEC-sponsored Innovation conference in Cork (Sept 20) and the Engineers' conference in Sligo. There was some media attention to the highlights of the first and the third, particularly in the latter to Padraig White and Mark Hely-Hutchinson; 'privatisation' appears to be becoming a new media buzzword. The Cork event was ignored. In what follows I contribute to redressing the balance.

At the Burlington TP Hardiman reminded us that our alleged strength in exports is grossly dependent on foreign R and D; Ireland is 18th out of 24 OECD countries in an 'innovation' ranking headed by Japan. JG Corr of Galway Regional College, speaking for the RTC sector, warned of the underutilisation of RTC talent in regional industrial development; a management framework was needed for college-based regional applied-research consultancy services: currently there are obstacles to this in the VEC system, which needs reform to allow it to fulfil its 3rd-level function effectively. Hardiman in subsequent discussion said that industry did not understand the inhibitions: how were the VEC rules relevant? There is a mutual comprehension gap here to be explored.

Dr Newell, who heads the Central Applications Office, contrasted the Irish system with the French, where the public service is managed by an intellectual elite from the Grands Ecoles; Ireland, outside Dublin, is effectively a 3rd-world country. George Dawson, of TCD, to his credit called for student admissions to be organised on an all-Ireland basis, to take advantage of the excess capacity in the Northern system, in the context of New Ireland Forum politics.

In Cork the keynote address was given for Dirk Jan Dekker, of the EEC Regional Policy Directorate. The whole island of Ireland is one region; an information-technology programme is in gestation. The thrust must come from the Region's own problem-solving effort (whence the importance of all-Ireland institutions). A model was emerging of structured and managed centres of innovation and entrepreneurship, with Chamber of Commerce, Trade Union and 3rd-level college participation. A European network of such centres was planned.

Some experience from Newcastle-on-Tyne was reported, from a primarily local-government-financed centre along these lines. Local industrial experience indicated that product-innovations generate jobs, with new or existing firms, while firms concentrating on process-innovation tend to cut jobs. The key factor is in-house R and D, which however needs outside support via managed access to college-based expertise.

Hugh Logue (who has been associated with some NBST all-Ireland initiatives) remarked that 79% of all network terminating-points are in Dublin; thus while theoretically new technologies are distance-independent, in practice they tend to concentrate in old industrial regions, near information-sources.

Professor Al Shapiro, of Ohio State University, put venture-capital into perspective: it is not about 'start-up', only becoming relevant at 'going-public'-time. Start-ups are personal and local. Dr Mike Peirce of Mentec International (the TCD industrial robotics spin-off) urged small firms to employ graduate engineers (see Padraig White below). Gerry Sweeney of IIRS urged that in any new-technology application involving electronics the production-worker should be the programmer; use his skills, don't programme him out. (He had clearly got Dr Mike Cooley's message from the Lucas Aerospace experience, now embodied in the policy of the Greater London Enterprise Board, a body worth emulating in the Irish context.)

Which leaves me little space for Sligo. The key message from Padraig White (IDA) was the need for development engineers in industry. There were conspicuously few such at the conference, which was dominated by the local-authority Civils. It is nice to see the term 'intellectual infrastructure' becoming cliche, especially as I can claim to have invented it. It remains however to be embodied in the thinking of the regional funding bodies in Ireland, who are blinkered by the traditional concern with physical infrastructure. On the latter, M J Boyle of Bord Gais remarked that the £60M invested in the gas pipeline had already been recovered by the sale of gas in Dublin. One wonders what obstacles are in the way of Bord Gais doing a purely commercial deal with the Northern municipal gas boards, by-passing the British Government. By all accounts the gas-workers, hitherto under Unionist patronage, are looking to Dublin for just this. Over to Dick Spring.

(Dr Roy Johnston is an applied-scientific consultant working in association with the TCD Department of Statistics.)

Annual Seedcorn Festival

Roy Johnston, Irish Times, January 1987

In the present state of political and economic crisis, it is timely to re-examine some of these issues, and to relate them to the problem of how to get Ireland to work. It is not enough for politicians to pay lip service to the importance of the YSE, while failing to take up the opportunities presented by what has become a prestigious internationally recognised event.

For example, I have for over a decade been listening to senior politicians (and in 1983 the Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald) bewailing the fact that even YSE wins get no Leaving Certificate credit. This has been a prominent anomaly since the competition was extended to Northern Ireland in the early 70s. In the UK there is a practical component in the GCE, for which projects can be submitted. A GCE project in Northern Ireland can easily double as an Aer Lingus project (it is not that the GCE in the North recognises YSE entries as such, as a respected contemporary editorialised last Friday).

The exhibition organisers, it seems, have been living in hopes based on politicians promises for all these years, but nothing has happened. You can be the Young Scientist(s) of the year, win the Philips Award (the European international competition) and go on to be a guest of honour in Stockholm at the Nobel Prize ceremonies, and it doesn't count for even one mark in your Leaving Cert.

I am simply stating the problem. I suspect it may be linked to overall Department policy on science practicals. Perhaps it is argued that because there is no science practical examination system, the YSE prizewinners can't be accommodated. We can turn this argument around, and make the case that by introducing bonus marks for YSE wins, a step is taken in the direction of a system for marking practicals.

Let me now go over some of the old controversial ground. I first advocated group projects in January 1971, and in January 1972 I got negative feedback from the judges: group projects would be teachers projects with pupils working as technicians; they would be difficult to judge, etc etc. I came back with the 'open class' proposal, without subject subdivision, and encouragement of interdisciplinary team-work.

In 1973 I reminded the judges that the group project in science was the norm in the world at large, and that the Irish individualist academic tradition was a sort of backwater of 19th-century gentleman-amateurism.

In 1974 the controversy began in earnest (cf Jan 9, Jan 23 and Feb 26). I exposed a fistful of anomalies arising out of the narrow subject classification, and suggested how it could be used in 'gamesmanship' mode to increase the win probability. It happened that the Irish National Productivity Committee ran an exhibition in March of that year; this was enterprise-oriented, involved mostly group projects, and was regionally based, being rooted in the work of he county development teams. Teacher support was mostly from civics, geography and commerce areas; scientific support was weak (only 6%). It seemed that the INPC exhibition lacked a core of scientific technology because the cream of the talent needed for this looked to the YSE for outlet. Thus we had a structural dichotomy between science on the one hand, and innovative entrepreneurship on the other.

I suspect that my April 3 article on the INPC Exhibition must have been the last straw, because in 1975 group projects first appeared in the YSE, though not initially in a prestigious form. (The INPC exhibition was subsequently dropped.) They were in an open class, but as a sort of B-stream, without the chance of getting the YSY award, which remained individual. They attracted large numbers, and generated heated discussion (one eminent judge, now alas no longer with us, attacked me at the reception; I had got my b--- group projects, and they were 'punk' etc). Although little attempt was made to to develop the idea of intra-team specialisation, in subsequent years this emerged.

Eventually the narrow subject classifications were abandoned in favour of the present 3 broad groupings, into which the group projects were finally admitted, giving access to the top awards for group project participants. The first group win was in 1983; it was from the North, and involved industrial robotics, with well-defined specialisations in mechanical engineering, electronic hardware and software.

The pattern of wins this year has confirmed the role of the group projects as vehicles for the development of science in Ireland towards a planned attack on the problem of national economic survival. The overall winning group and the group runner-up are both models for the type of approach that needs to become the norm at third level, as a feedstock for a new wave of innovative entrepreneurship, based on national physical and human resources.

Looking at the pattern of achievement of the early individual) winners, it is evident that the top award winners tend to end up as distinguished scientists, within specialist disciplines, abroad. Those who stay in Ireland tend to become teachers, unless they can find a niche in a resource-based industry where science is important (among the first twelve there is only one in this latter category; six are abroad).

This is not a pattern that will solve the problem of putting Ireland to work. We need to develop a system that will motivate the high achievers towards fulfilment within Ireland, including international recognition.

The international status of the YSE, resulting from the track-record of the winners who regularly go on to win the European (Philips) and US (Westinghouse) awards, should be a signal to the State that our national potential for the production of scientists is of the highest calibre.

How do we organise to realise this potential? Let me outline a plan for doing so. The central point of the plan is to get group interdisciplinary work recognised as the norm throughout the third level, for postgraduate and final-year undergraduate projects, and to increase the proportion of postgraduate activity devoted to studying the feasibility of marketable concepts. To do this at third level is for real. The pioneering work of the YSE at second level is a nursery, a playground. The concepts explored in interdisciplinary teamwork mode at second level can only become significant in national economic terms if they re-emerge at the end of the third-level cycle as serious market-oriented feasibility studies.

How to do this? There is a ready-made channel developing, in the form of regional enterprise development networks, or 'technopoles', embodying a third-level College and an associated enterprise incubation centre. The practice is emerging of postgraduate project concepts maturing into innovative enterprise via enterprise incubation centres. So far it is only a trickle. It needs to become a flood.

An important stimulus to make this trickle into a flood could be the regionalisation of the YSE, via a series of regional eliminations. These could be held in the 'regional technopoles', possibly in association with the annual 'open days' at which third-level student projects are exhibited. An exhibition of some hundreds of innovative projects, embodying potentially marketable concepts, drawn from second and third level education, would be of great interest. Appropriate percentages of both second-level and third-level activity would then go on to the national exhibition in Dublin, which would have continuity with the existing YSE tradition, the third-level entries being seen as a new 'mature' channel, constituting a sort of national 'venture-fair'.

In this new situation, the superiority of the interdisciplinary group approach would assert itself definitively, in the context of innovative enterprise development. The individual project, motivated by scientific curiosity, would of course remain, but without dominating the scene, as it has done up to recently.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999