A New Chapter in a Fascinating Story.

The Centre for Irish Education was opened by the Minister for European Affairs Mr. Dick Roche TD at a reception hosted by his Excellency Dr. Richard O'Brien at his residence on the 22nd November 2007. The immediate impetus for the creation of the Centre came from the report commissioned by the Irish Embassy in Singapore titled “Developing Educational Links between Ireland and Singapore” which John Dennehy - the former Secretary General of the Department of Education and now CEO of IDI-Education – launched at the 2006 AGM of the Irish Business Association. The report according to Minister Roche “opened a new chapter in our longstanding relationship with Singapore in the education sector”. The historical fruits of this relationship can be seen in the fascinating footprints left by both individuals and institutions on the Irish and Singaporean Educational landscapes.

The most impressive of these imprints was left by the late Brother Joseph McNally whose life and work is celebrated in the museum at the Centre of the Campus of La Salle College of the Arts at Number One McNally Street. In 1984, Brother Joseph, set up LASALLE College of the Arts - initially called the St. Patrick's Arts Centre - funding it mostly out of his own pocket. This went against the grain of Singapore society in the 1980s, a time when the arts were given low esteem. Brother Joseph stepped down as President of LASALLE, but remained a member of its Board of Directors until his death in 2002 during a visit to his hometown in Ballintubber, County Mayo. In 2004, Minister of Foreign Affairs George Yeo led a 30-strong delegation to Brother Joseph's hometown. In a ceremony commemorating his contributions, one of Brother Joseph's own sculptures, Counsellor II, was erected on the grounds of the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. It was a heartfelt "thank you" to Ireland for the "gift of Brother Joseph McNally".

In addition to the unique contribution of Brother McNally there is the continuing Singaporean engagement with the Irish university sector through the steady flow of Singaporean students studying medicine on the island of Ireland. This ongoing and very successful connection in medical education is now administered by the Irish Medical Schools consortium in conjunction with their Singaporean representative, Dr Stanley Quek, a Trinity graduate, who since the early 1980s has screened potential candidates for the Irish medical schools. His sterling work in ensuring the integrity and ongoing viability of this process has been recognized by Trinity College where he was one of four recipients who received Trinity College’s Inaugural Alumni Awards which were presented in Trinity College on October 19th 2007.

The ongoing engagement between Ireland and Singapore in the medical and other fields also finds an institutional expression through the social activities organized under the umbrella of the Irish Graduates Association Singapore (IGAS) where Singaporean and Irish graduates join to share their experiences and happy memories of their times in Ireland. Under the leadership of John Blair, a Queens Engineering Graduate, the number of members has been steadily increasing.

The relationship also has a very striking contemporary manifestation through the collaboration between Kaplan APMI and the Michael Smurfit School of Business, University College Dublin. APMI Kaplan has identified a niche and lucrative market in bridging the gap between diploma and degree level in Singapore by running a raft of part-time degree programmes from the Michael Smurfit School to cater for the demand from Polytechnic graduates who wish to stay in Singapore and upgrade their qualifications from diploma to degree level. Notable UCD lectures, from Professors Aidan Kelly to Pat Gibbons, have over the years become welcome and regular visitors to the shores of Singapore in delivering their engaging lectures to their Singaporean students. This year APMI Kaplan UCDs programme had over 200 graduates with that number projected to double in the next year.

Set against this background, the Embassy report identified a number of potential areas of future engagement building on our existing relationship.

The Embassy report observed that the most striking feature of the Singaporean contemporary third-level educational architecture is its' binary nature and that this dualism offered a unique opportunity to the Irish Institutes of Technology. The three universities in Singapore - NUS, NTU and SMU enjoy degree awarding power while the five polytechnics have diploma awarding powers. The five polytechnics between them have an average intake of 25,00O students per year, with 10-15% of the cohort coming from overseas. It is estimated that at least 50% of Polytechnic diploma graduates will at some stage in their career go on to pursue a degree either in Singapore or overseas. As we have seen the Michael Smurfit School of Business in conjunction with APMI Kaplan have been successful in capitalizing on the demand from Singaporean Poly working graduates wishing to study part-time in the evenings and at weekends. The report pointed out that there was also a significant proportion of Polytechnic graduates who would ultimately go overseas to top up their diploma to degree level rather than remaining in Singapore to do so. The Irish Institutes of Technology with their step by step ladder system of qualifications from an ordinary three year degree to a 4 years honours degree offer a clear pathway for Singaporean Poly graduates looking for a European educational experience to complete their journey to degree level. Therefore one of the key recommendations of the report was for the Irish Institutes of Technology to start engaging on a substantive basis with their Polytechnic counterparts in Singapore through articulation agreements, student exchanges, staff mobility, joint research and work placements.

In the wake of the report we have seen important progress in a number of areas. There have now been visits from 7 Institutes of Technology to Singapore since the publication of the report; international marketing teams are in discussions – academics are meeting - agreements are being formulated – and already the number of students going to Ireland on exchange programs from the Polytechnics is steadily increasing and Peter Ryan, through the Asia European Foundation (ASEF)has facilitated workshops and exhibitions linking Irish Institutions with their European and Asian partners. While this was impressive, I concluded, with advice from colleagues and encouragement from the Irish Embassy and others in the educational field in Singapore that without a more developed structure – and without additional local resources - progress would remain modest and even faltering. Consequently the Centre of Irish Education was established with the objective of 250 Singaporean students studying in Ireland by 2010 now firmly set in place.

In achieving its target the central function of the Centre for Irish Education will be to create awareness of Ireland and the Irish education brand in Singapore. This branding exercise to be conducted over the next three years will focus on three dimensions of the Irish educational experience. The first dimension will focus on the quality of the Irish educational system. The second aspect will focus on the cost effectiveness of choosing Ireland as an education destination. The third dimension will focus on career prospects in Ireland for graduates.

The immediate focus of the Centre for Irish Education to date has been on creating awareness in Singapore of the educational opportunities in Ireland by conducting presentations to Singapore students, by participating in Career and Educational fairs with support from the Embassy, by raising awareness of Irish organizations and cultural events such as the St Patrick's Day parade. The Centre will soon offer detailed profiles about studying in Ireland on its website – soon to be translated into the languages of the ASEAN region – which will have an easy-to-search database detailing the courses on offer to our affiliated Irish Universities and Institutes of Technology. The Centre - which is housed in the Central Business District opposite Bugis Junction - will also provide the facilities of a One-Stop-Shop meeting student needs to understand the excellence and the opportunities of Irish educational products.

The key challenge facing the Centre in establishing an Irish educational brand in the context of Singapore will be the lack of knowledge of Ireland itself. This issue of lack of recognition is particularly acute amongst the younger generation of Singaporeans who, as the Embassy reports surveys showed, know little about Ireland. In tackling this most fundamental of issues, the Centre has two resources which can be deployed and projected in the Singaporean context. The first is our cultural resources and the second is our economic success, and in particular, our success at attracting substantive inward investment.

Our culture, even to a hard-headed economics graduate, represents our distinctiveness and a key point of difference in raising awareness of Ireland. In the Singapore context, Irish cultural events take on key significance – events such as the St Patrick’s Day Parade, literary events, the staging of Irish plays coupled with the Irish institutional presence in Singapore through The Irish Embassy, The Irish Business Association, The Gaelic Lions, St Patrick’s Society, The Irish Graduates Association Singapore, the religious community, not to mention the 7 distinctive homes of Irish hospitality, encompass our cultural and social engagement with Singapore and Singaporeans on a regular basis. Culture is the glue which binds our collective sense of identity within and outside of Ireland, but it is a resource which on the Singaporean stage projects a point of difference and engagement for Singaporeans with Ireland.

Our success is attracting inward investment is linked to the success of our education system but also I would argue to the cultural resources and quality of life that Ireland has to offer. In a conversation with a Principal of a top educational institution in Singapore, I was struck by how candid he was on the issue of how Singapore Inc lost out to Ireland Inc on a number of projects such as Seagate. One theme which popped up again and again in our conversation was how that intangible called culture Ireland had wielded to maximum effect. As Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yee approvingly pointed out to me at a question and answer session to foreign journalists at the Foreign Correspondents Association before the last election in April 2006, Ireland, unlike Singapore, was a nation before it was a state. Singapore was quite unique in the sense that it was a state before it became a nation. So the importance of nation-building, of how you create a sense of national self-identity and cultural attachment is something which the Singapore government has been preoccupied with. The Irish experience in both the economic and cultural spheres is relevant to Singaporeans and is something which can be used to raise Ireland’s profile.

The key challenge in creating a greater sense of awareness of Ireland in Singapore is for us an Irish community to understand that the promotion of Ireland is a collaborative project which we all, sometimes unwittingly, take part in. The Centre’s contribution in creating this greater awareness, as I envisage it, will be to join up and link together our cultural and social resources and to align them in creating a picture of Ireland and the Irish educational experience which strikes a chord with Singaporeans, in particular younger Singaporeans. This will require a substantial investment of time and effort, but with the continued support and goodwill of the Irish community in Singapore, the Centre for Irish Education will add a new chapter to an already fascinating story of engagement between our two peoples on the educational front.