NET RESULTS:Today Intel celebrates its 20th anniversary in Ireland. We must do all we can to ensure it stays here, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON
THE STORY took the number-two slot on the front page of this newspaper 20 years ago: “US Firm Has Target of 2,600 Jobs”.
That story, written in October 1989, confirmed rumours that chip manufacturer Intel was to build a wafer plant in Leixlip, Co Kildare.
With Ireland in severe economic doldrums and few signs of an upswing, much less the eventual boom times that slumbered off in the future, the prospect of so many high-value electronics jobs was welcome and exciting.
“It will help us to attract further major investment in this field,” the IDA Ireland project officer responsible for Intel, Frank Ryan, told the paper. That was certainly an understatement – Intel would become one of the most visible of the “anchor tenant” multinationals and would support an extensive ecosystem of indigenous companies and suppliers.
In the story, then Intel vice-president Keith Thompson must have been among the first to cite the now familiar litany of reasons for a multinational to establish a base in Ireland: “the availability of a well-educated workforce, attractive taxation and incentives, the availability of suitable land, good infrastructure services” and, of course, “the quality of life in Ireland”.
Almost exactly a decade later – two weeks shy of the day that story ran – another story on Intel ran in the newspaper, an interview I did with Intel co-founder, former chief executive and then chairman Andy Grove. He was in Ireland to visit the Leixlip facility and speak at an event at Dublin Castle.
By 1999 the economy had taken off with a roar, and Grove noted he had told then taoiseach Bertie Ahern that “the Irish economy has done phenomenally well, and the consequences of that is often a strain on infrastructure”.
He had added that the State needed a liberal immigration policy to enable it to fulfil its hunger for skilled technology workers.
He thought Dublin was too expensive and was shocked at the price of basic telecommunications services within the State for company-to-company connections.
And talk about deja vu. “Dr Grove is adamant that the single most crucial factor in whether the Republic can become an international e-commerce centre is not ‘ballpark projects’ – big, government- supported infrastructure initiatives – but the speed at which indigenous Irish companies embrace the internet as a central part of doing business.”
Fast forward another decade, and we had Grove’s successor, former Intel boss Craig Barrett, suggesting much the same at the diaspora gig at Farmleigh. He pointed out that, of the list of reasons why Intel had come to Ireland in 1989, only one – the tax benefits – still held true.
Well, that’s stretching it a bit. Intel still gets a steady stream of employees from the State’s institutes of technology and has had a huge impact in influencing the curriculum for that reason, a convenient arrangement for the company.
The quality of life here, by international measures, remains high, just as it was in 1989 when the State had a higher rate of unemployment and far lower standard of living.
Barrett’s Farmleigh criticisms were not new. He and other technology executives have made similar comments and sabre-rattled in a similar vein in interviews for the past decade.
Intel Ireland general manager Jim O’Hara said as much at a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland in 2002. It is just that perhaps we were not in the mood to listen back then.
By the time of the Farmleigh gathering we were primed for self-flagellation and Barrett was like the stern parent telling us what we all knew, as we hung our heads in embarrassment.
The fact that Barrett’s opinions were universally highlighted and became the defining “take-away” from Farmleigh illustrates the degree to which Intel matters in Ireland – and has mattered since it poured the concrete for the first Leixlip chip-fabrication plant.
A small set of big technology multinationals have been at the centre of Irish growth for the past two decades. They underwrote the yearning in the late 1980s to move beyond grim unemployment, emigration and low-level manufacturing jobs.
Those companies helped Ireland change the way it saw itself and helped kickstart the economy.
Intel is central to that cluster of multinationals. The loss of any of them – as witnessed recently with Dell’s huge manufacturing presence – causes a national convulsion that is larger than the pain of the loss of the individual jobs.
Intel went on to provide about double the original job predictions, becoming one of the biggest employers in the State. Some were lost this year, as a small division shut down and hoped-for new manufacturing went elsewhere.
We have changed. Other upcoming countries play the role Ireland once did, vying for new Intel developments, offering low taxes, cheap land and an educated workforce.
We can’t reverse some of what has changed, but we can work to ensure we have the elements of a next-generation business-friendly environment that, so far, keep Intel here.
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