The Fianna Fail party, in power in Ireland since 1997, had supported science well enough over the last decade or so to allow the small country to dramatically raise its international profile. This year it even scraped into the top twenty science-producing countries in terms of citations per research paper.

Irish scientists now have to worry about whether this progress will be maintained under Fine Gael, the party that swept to victory in last Friday’s election and is likely to form a coalition government with the Labour party. The new government will have to deal with Ireland’s profound economic crisis, at least in part, through cuts in public spending.

But stem cell researchers have most to worry about, since Fine Gael is opposed to research using human embryonic stem (hES) cells.

The human embryo issue is very sensitive in Ireland, a very Catholic country where abortion is only permitted if there is a risk to the mother’s life. The Fianna Fail government had encouraged the development of a strong biomedical research community and provided attractive tax breaks for international pharmaceutical companies – 13 of the world’s 15 largest now have plants in Ireland and employ 24,500 people. But it had remained nervous of regulating use of human embryonic stem cells in research.

It had promised to do so in December 2009 as part of planned legislation governing assisted human reproduction. But that same month it disbanded the Irish Council for Bioethics (which might have provided independent advice on legislation) to save money, and the legislation never emerged

Ireland’s public funding agencies, Science Foundation Ireland and the Health Research Board, both decided not to fund work involving hES cells until the legal situation is clarified. Two universities – Trinity College Dublin and University College Cork – have internal rules allowing such research on imported hES cell lines, if researchers are supported with foreign research grants. In the legislative uncertainty, no scientist has taken this up.

The Labour party, has said it would like to regulate stem cell research so that hES cells could be used under restrictions applied in some other European countries – as had been recommended by the Irish Council for Bioethics before it was disbanded.

Gavin Davey, who researches neurodegenerative diseases at Trinity College Dublin, says that the danger of these starkly opposing views within the proposed coalition could be a continuation of the legislative vacuum. ‘It really would be the worst scenario if no-one makes a decision,’ he says.