Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 14 Jun 1978

Vol. 89 No. 8

Adjournment Debate. - Institute for Industrial Research and Standards.

Professor Murphy

Táim buíoch duit as ucht cead a thabhairt dom an rud seo a phlé. I am glad of the opportunity of raising this matter. I do so in an entirely non-contentious spirit and only in the interest of clarifying what seems to be an anomaly in the workings of the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards. At issue here, I suggest, is their credibility with the public. The IIRS have done very good work indeed and there is no contention about most of the work they do. Let me remind the House that they were set up by the Industrial Research and Standards Act, 1946 and reorganised by an amending Act in 1961, and the functions of the institute are defined in section 6 of that Act of 1961. Among those functions are to undertake, encourage and foster scientific research, promote the utilisation of the natural resources of the State and so on, and these functions they have carried out excellently. During the debate on the White Paper I paid tribute to the work of the IIRS in their work of ascertaining natural resources.

Throughout the Act the public role of the IIRS is stressed. Again and again it is conveyed that the institute shall work for the public benefit. I am bringing up the matter because I do not think it is quite clear that the institute are carrying out their work for the public benefit exclusively and that there can be contradiction between this and its other role. Of the work they do 80 per cent is noncontroversial. They can, for example, be consulted by Irish Steel about specifications, and here their expertise and level of technical excellence are unchallenged. They have similarly done much work for small industries in the country and here again they deserve public gratitude.

But more and more over the past seven or eight years the IIRS have been called in as consultants to private industry in the very controversial area of pollution, or, put more widely, in the area of environmental hazards, and it is in this area that some of their work can give rise to public concern. I would be disingenuous if I pretended that this did not arise immediately out of a particular case and that is the case of Raybestos Manhattan which has been agitating the emotions of my fellow Corkmen for some time now. I do not propose to go into the pros and cons of that situation but it does present a perfect test case of the kind of thing I am talking about. In The Cork Examiner at the moment there is a series of advertisements the purpose of which is to restore, or perhaps recover, public confidence in what is going on in the asbestos factory at Ovens and in the question of waste disposal at Ringaskiddy. In these advertisements the public are reassured of what is going on and are told that the IDA have taken all necessary steps and so on. International experts are quoted and the opinions of the IIRS are cited. It would appear from that that the IIRS are acting as a public watchdog, which is the main role envisaged for them in the Act of 1961, but the IIRS in the case of Raybestos Manhattan and in many other cases as well are playing a dual if not contradictory role.

It is true that the IIRS have nothing ostensibly to do with private industry until planning permission is granted, and so the IIRS people might claim that this protects their independence. They are apparently kept out of the picture until planning permission is granted and the industry is set up. But in fact what happens is that as soon as a prospective industrialist looks at a site and puts his cards on the table the Industrial Development Authority employ the IIRS to look at that company's application, the IIRS services are paid for by the IDA and a report based on their recommendations is then presented to the planning authority. After various appeals and so on the permission is granted, and then that private industry may, and in most cases does, consult the IIRS in a private consultant capacity. Therefore, you have a kind of concealed role at the beginning in which the IIRS act as consultants for the IDA and then subsequently on the granting of planning permission the IIRS are taken on as private consultants by the company in question. The institute do not shun this role as consultants; in fact they seek it out actively. They feel that they have somehow to shift the bulk of their financial maintenance from Government to industry and they are encouraged and feel themselves under pressure to thus increase their share of consultant revenue. The planning permission is a direct result of IIRS reports. It is they who present a report to the IDA and that report goes straight to the planning authority and the planning authority incorporate the IIRS reports straight into their draft planning material. Yet the institute go on to be employed as a private consultant by the company subsequently to guarantee the adequacy of pollution safeguards.

There is also a lack of any sufficient safeguard at planning authority level to evaluate what the IIRS do so that they reign supreme really in the matter of assessing safe levels and so on of pollutants. Theoretically the county council have an environmental officer, but it is well known within groups like An Taisce that there is unease about the qualifications of environmental officers to deal effectively with these matters. The broad outline is as I have suggested. The independence of the IIRS as a public watchdog is being limited by the economic imperative of having also to earn their keep as private consultants. Is it not true that their watchdog role is being limited if not compromised? Should there be another body set up which would be exclusively a public watchdog without any suspicion of being involved in the private side, or should the safeguards to maintain public confidence and credibility in the IIRS be spelled out more fully? It reminds me of when I was young and innocent and a prospective purchaser of a house. I found to my horror that the solicitor who was acting for me was also acting for the vendor. Obviously in that situation somebody was losing out and it was not the vendor.

In conclusion, what is needed is at least an acknowledgement that there is an anomaly here. I am raising this matter in an entirely non-contentious spirit and I would like to see at least the problem acknowledged.

Minister for State at the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy (Mrs. Geoghegan-Quinn)

It is difficult in the short time available to deal adequately with this subject, all the more so because of the importance and the very wide scope of the functions and the activities of the IIRS. I would like first to make some general comments about these and then to deal in so far as it is possible for me to do so in the circumstances with the points raised by Senator Murphy.

The functions of the IIRS as set out in section 6 of the Industrial Research and Standards Act, 1961 are very extensive. One could say that on the basis of these functions the scope of the activities of the institute in relation to industry could, in principle at any rate, be held to extend to all industrial activity from the efficient utilisation of raw materials and natural resources to the provision of quality assurance on manufactured goods and processes. In practice, however, industrial trends and the need to utilise to maximum advantage the resources of the institute mean that the range of services provided is not quite so extensive and that the institute's services to industry are concentrated on the manufacture and use of goods, minerals, chemicals, plastics and metals and on the building, textile and food industry. In addition a wide range of industries are provided with general services in energy saving, in product and process evaluation and certification, standard specifications, product testing, calibration and measurement facilities for both home and export market. In short, the institute endeavour to provide for Irish industry in one organisation a range of tasks that in other European countries are undertaken by a series of separate technical institutes or research associations catering for individual industries. This means that there is in the institute a concentration of specialist technological skills and facilities which are available to industry generally on a shared cost basis.

The tasks performed by the industry can be classified under four broad heads. They are: research and development which are orientated to industry; technical advisory services which are likewise orientated to industry and at their higher level tend to merge with research and development activities; standards and specifications which are partly consumer and partly industry orientated; and free advisory services. The number of jobs done in a year by the institute under the first two heads is about 10,000 of about which 80 per cent are jobs which cost the client less than £100 each. It may interest the House to know that 72 per cent of these jobs are for firms in the private sector.

There is a clear need for much greater research and development effort on the part of industry generally, and in furtherance of this it is likely that the institute will have to extend further their activities in this area. This does not mean that the institute should engage in fundamental research but that they concentrate on the development aspects and in assisting Irish firms, native or foreignowned, to identify and assimilate relevant technologies. For instance the IIRS are already playing an active role with foreign firms in the chemical sector by identifying new product lines and by establishing contacts with Irish companies to supply intermediate products and specialist machine parts. It is also increasingly recognised both by the State bodies and by the managements of externally controlled companies that the continuance and growth of their Irish operations will depend on the development of new products or processes initiated in Ireland. Demand for the technical advisory services of the Institute continues to increase There are many aspects to technical advisory services and they vary from industry to industry.

I would, however, like to comment on one aspect of the technical advisory services, and I do so partly because it was mentioned by Senator Murphy and partly because there appears to be a good deal of misunderstanding about the nature of the role of the IIRS in this matter. I refer to the role of the IIRS in regard to environmental problems. In this area the institute have built up over the last few years the largest group of environmental consultants in the State and have developed an expertise to tackle a wide range of complex environmental problems. Had the institute not acquired this expertise there is little doubt that the services of foreign consultants would have had to be invoked to deal with many of the bigger and more exacting environmental assignments.

The service which the institute provide in this matter is available alike to Government, local authorities and industry. Despite, or perhaps because of, this there appears, regrettably, to be a certain amount of misunderstanding about the nature of the role of the institute. This sometimes is in the form of the accusation that in the case of new industry the institute act in environmental matters as judge, jury and executioner. The true position is that since 1973 the Industrial Development Authority have used the services of the institute and of An Foras Forbartha to undertake an assessment from the environmental point of view of new industrial projects. This procedure ensures on the one hand that environmentally unacceptable industries are ruled out at an early stage by the IDA and it also means that the Department of the Environment are involved, albeit indirectly, through An Foras Forbartha in influencing at the earliest stages the initial standards for new industry. At the planning stage of a new industry the local authorities are invariably presented with a copy of the joint assessment undertaken by the IIRS and An Foras Forbartha. If the local authority do not accept the joint assessment they are free to seek more information from both the institute and from An Foras Forbartha to commission them to undertake further work on their behalf or to employ outside consultants.

I do not know if there have been any instances where the integrity of the joint assessment was called into question by the local authority, although IIRS findings may of course meet with local opposition. The local authorities rarely use foreign consultants although foreign experts are sometimes called in by local objectors. Once the planning stage has been successfully completed the institute consider themselves free of their commitment to the IDA and the local authority, and can if requested undertake fee earning work on behalf of the new industry. The institute never become involved in assisting a particular enterprise until planning permission has been received. Part of the misunderstanding that arises here may be due to the misconception that the engagement of the IIRS as a consultant, either by the IDA in respect of a particular project or by the industry itself when established, means that the institute are then on the side of their client. The institute endeavour to be totally objective in their advice to clients and in environmental matters never claim to act for a private client to his advantage. In this the institute set great store by the maintenance of their reputation for objectivity and will not be prepared to do anything that would damage that reputation.

Another aspect of the institute's activities which I would like to touch on, bearing in mind the present compaign for the promotion of increased sales of Irish goods on the home market, is the information that it has provided and will continue to provide in conjunction with the Irish Goods Council. Senators may not be aware, for example, that the institute have produced in conjunction with the council an extensive 280-page directory of consumer product manufacturers.

I would like to reiterate what Senator Murphy said when he complimented the IIRS. All of us in this country owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the IIRS for some of the tremendous work which they have undertaken not only on behalf of the IDA and of local authorities but on behalf of industry generally in our country.

The Seanad adjourned at 6.45 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 15 June 1978.