Irish Innovation: While basic or curiosity research is important, Irish and European science lobbies are pressurising governments to give funding priority to it even though innovation does not necessarily follow from science. Helga Nowotny, president of the European Research Council (ERC) says: "Scientific curiosity, given sufficient space and autonomy, remains the most powerful driving force behind the completely unforeseeable transformations in how our societies develop. In order to understand what science can do for Europe, it is important to clarify what science - - that is, curiosity-driven frontier research -- cannot do for Europe: deliver results that can immediately be commercialised." True but Europe's more important problem is that it is poor at innovation, which mainly depends on utilising existing knowledge rather than new scientific discoveries. The scientists want to have control of budgets with no mission targets even though Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), one of Europe's greatest scientists, had the goal of improving public health and historically, the US government's spending on basic research, has always had some mission goal: the Manhattan Project; the Cold War, the Space Mission and Public Health.
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