I wish the Taoiseach would leap into this discussion for a moment. There is a danger in this proposal of which I seem to hear echoes by the Minister for External Affairs from what Deputy Vivion de Valera has said. This is an institute of agriculture. I would like to think of myself as being as pragmatical a person as there is in this house, but I think it would be catastrophic if, at this stage of the institute's history, the threshold of its institution, we were to try and create the impression here that we wished, in so far as it lay within our power, to veto any proposal for fundamental research which the institute might think it expedient from time to time to promote either by way of making grants or providing facilities, etc. There is nothing more dangerous than an undue—and I emphasise the word "undue"—predilection for applied research.
I was reading recently what I thought was a very apt article by a man named Schwartz in the Sunday Times. He was referring to the Labour programme for regulating investment and controlling it. He said 35 years ago a Japanese national let off a rocket and attached himself to the end of it, and the only apparent result was that he burnt the seat of his pants and cut his knees and countenance by being dragged along by the rocket. “Would that man,” said Schwartz, “if he had applied for money to develop his idea have got it from a bureaucracy that was controlling the allocation of capital?” Yet it was that man and his crazy rocket who provided the genesis of powers that to-day control the world.
Accordingly, I think that in the field of research any of us can think up a number of problems beyond which specific applied research can be embarked upon to-morrow, but we should be very slow to say that in addition to these obvious avenues of research and progress scientists should not apply themselves at all or that this institute should not facilitate scientists in turning their minds to fundamental issues.
I cannot emphasise too strongly how profoundly I believe and how urgently I would ask the House to believe that Dáil Éireann cannot run this institute, that the Department of Agriculture cannot run this institute. The only people who can run it are the council and its director, and it is because I am so profoundly convinced of that that I would urge most strongly on the Dáil that if you err at all, err on the side of giving this council and its director too wide a scope. Whatever you do, do not err on the side of hemming them in, because if you do you may get the result of this project being still-born.
I should like to hear the views of some other Deputies on that aspect of the situation. I think that the Bill, as drafted, does give wide scope, sufficiently wide scope, but I would be solidly against the suggestion that the Minister responsible for drafting the Bill should deprecate the principle of wide freedom for applied or fundamental research. I do not imagine that he really does, but I apprehend that the trend of the discussion on this section and on Section 2 might create that impression. It is important at this stage, before such an impression gets abroad, that the situation would be authoritatively clarified. I regret profoundly that I am not in a position authoritatively to clarify this matter.
If I were, I would have no hesitation about it. It is now the responsibility of the Minister for External Affairs and of our new Minister for Agriculture. I have not much hope in the Minister for External Affairs; I have none in the Minister for Agriculture. By the mercy of Providence he apparently has not taken over yet, or the prospects of an institute would be bleak indeed. However, I am prepared to settle for the best I can get. All I am asking now is that on behalf of the Government the Minister should reiterate the principle that the widest discretion is vested in this council and in the director within the reading of Sections 2 and 4.
