Welcome Address for the EU Presidency Press Corps Visit
Long Room Hub, Trinity College
08:15, Wednesday, 09 January 2013
Minister, Distinguished members of the European and international press,
I’m delighted to welcome you to Trinity College Dublin as part of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU.
This morning we will look at some of the education priorities of the Presidency. And Minister Rabbitte will launch a major pan-European telecommunications project, starting this month, and co-ordinated by Trinity.
This project, like other FP7 projects, showcases the EU’s commitment to higher education as the key to improving Europe’s growth and competitiveness.
I’m delighted that Ireland is commencing its Presidency by highlighting higher education’s importance to economic growth - and I’m delighted that Trinity is involved.
A few months ago I had the honour of being appointed to the governing board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology – the EIT. As I’m sure you know, the EIT aims to link up Europe’s higher education, research, and business sectors in order to develop a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. I take my appointment to the board as a tribute to the way we have embraced innovation alongside the core mission of education and research – put it at the heart of university activities.
So today I’d like to talk, briefly, about Trinity, our research, and how we might further Europe’s innovation agenda.
This year, 2013, heralds the 40th anniversary of Ireland’s entry to the EU and the 421st anniversary of the founding of this university, Trinity College Dublin.
Trinity was founded long before the independent Irish State came into being, but of course that’s not uncommon in Europe: the ancient universities of Salamanca and Bologna predated by many centuries the unifications of Spain and of Italy. With their long traditions of learning, languages, and academic exchanges, Europe’s universities are precursors, in a sense, of the seminal EU commitment to the free movement of people and ideas.
There’s something reassuringly familiar about the historical layout of Europe’s universities – many, like Trinity, are groupings of buildings and libraries around courtyards, quadrangles and lawns. Later this morning, you will have the opportunity to visit the Old Library and the 9th century Book of Kells, which is one of Ireland’s great treasures held here in Trinity.
Trinity is Ireland’s highest ranking university, and ranked 19th in Europe. We’re proud of this position, but we’d like to see Europe’s universities, in general, improving in the world rankings. We recognise that investments made by both the public and private sectors in the US and in Asia mean that Europe’s universities face serious competition, and that Innovation Ecosystems in Europe need strengthening.
However Horizon 2020, together with initiatives such as the EIT, do show that there is real vigour – real serious intent - in Europe’s commitment to innovation. It’s the job of Trinity, as of all Europe’s universities, to work within EU frameworks to really deliver education goals and improve our continent’s growth and competitiveness.
Trinity is a multidisciplinary university with faculties of Medicine, Law, Engineering, Humanities, Science, Social Sciences, and others. Where some universities draw their strength from specialisation, we draw ours from interdisciplinarity. We show what a multidisciplinary community focused on excellence can achieve. In eighteen fields we are ranked in the top 1 percent in the world – in fields such as neuroscience, immunology, and bioengineering.
This emphasis on collaboration – between people, disciplines, and institutions – has meant, I think, that Trinity has fitted naturally and well with the aims, ideals, and procedures of the EU Framework Programme, with which we have been involved since its inception in the 1980s. I know that, among Irish universities, Trinity received the largest portion of FP7 funding, secured for over 146 research projects, covering areas from security, telecommunications, and health, to environment, agri-food and energy.
The Minister will be launching one such FP7 awarded project this morning: DISCUS, a major pan-European telecommunications research project that will revolutionise broadband use in Ireland. It’s a three year project, starting this month, and co-ordinated by the national Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR), which is headquartered here in Trinity College under the leadership of Professor Linda Doyle.
This project is key to strengthening Europe’s digital economy. When I say ‘digital economy’ I’m talking about a broad field. For instance, Trinity also co-ordinates two major Digital Humanities FP7 projects. One of them, called CENDARI, aims to integrate different countries’ archives and resources to enable pan-European research in medieval and modern history. Later this morning, Dr Jennifer Edmond, CENDARI’s coordinator, will tell you a bit more about it.
And five other leading Trinity researchers will talk about their EU-funded projects to give you an idea of the range of research in Trinity, and of the research areas prioritised by Europe.
This is, I don’t need to remind you, a difficult period for Europe in general, and for Ireland in particular. I don’t want to minimise the difficulties - and as the Head of a part publicly-funded university I’m not likely to forget them!
But equally, I recognise that this is also a time of opportunity because of the potential for industry and academic link-up. We’re in a period of an historic global opportunity for universities, and it’s to the credit of the European Council, Commission, and Parliament that they have understood the nature of the opportunity.
I’m delighted that Ireland has made education a priority of its Presidency. I know that we, and future generations of Europe’s students, innovators, and entrepreneurs will be grateful for it.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your morning in Trinity – I know you will enjoy your visit to the Science Gallery, which exhibits science as if they were art, and is the first of its kind, - and we are in talks with cities around the world – Bangalore, New York, London, for example, to establish Science Galleries there too based on the Dublin model.
Thank you for your attention. It’s my pleasure now to invite Mr Pat Rabbitte, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, to launch DISCUS.
* * *