By establishing a special fund for investment in technological education, the Government is sending a strong message to international investors that it recognises Ireland is suffering from a "high-tech" skills shortage and is determined to do something about it.
The problem has been caused by a demand for skilled labour as a result of the economic boom. Early last year, complaints began to be heard from both foreign multinationals and Irish firms which were having difficulties recruiting software, electronics and other high technology staff.
More and more companies started to lobby government ministers, pointing out that it takes four years to produce a university graduate and decisions had to be taken immediately to meet demand in the next century.
The IDA heard that overseas industrial development bodies such as the Scottish Development Agency were telling investors not to go to Ireland because of skills shortages.
One central problem was a lack of policy integration, with the then Department of Enterprise and Employment asking the Department of Education to train more technology graduates, the latter demanding more money to do so, and the Department of Finance saying no.
Last December, a high-level committee drawn from the Departments of Education, Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and Finance was set up to study the situation.
The problem has become particularly acute in the rapidly-growing information technology sector. A recent survey showed that 70 per cent of companies were having difficulty recruiting staff with an information technology background, while 80 per cent said they planned to increase their information technology workforce over the next year.
The specific bottleneck was part of a much wider realisation of the importance of education to economic growth. In earlier years, the rapid growth of the high-technology sector in Ireland had been due largely to financial and fiscal incentives. The ESRI noted more recently that growth had become increasingly reliant on availability of a highly-skilled and educated workforce.
In its last annual report, the IDA stated: "Ireland is now irreversibly on the course of a highvalue, high-skilled economy." It emphasised the "need to recognise education as our single most important competitive advantage and allocate resources accordingly".
Information technology is a particular interest of the new Education Minister, Mr Micheal Martin. One of the first things he did on taking office last summer was to organise meetings with leading figures in the computer and information technology industry to ask them about their skills shortages.
Over the past four months, a small group of senior officials in the Department of Education has been working on a package of proposals to present to the Government, consulting only with an equally selective group in the IDA, Forbairt and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
They saw Britain as a "negative role model". One official yesterday quoted the British Dearing Report's scathing comments on how the British polytechnics - most of them now universities in name - had put on countless substandard courses in business and other subjects rather than the high- technology courses they were set up to provide.
This is one reason for the strong emphasis in yesterday's proposals on the technological colleges. Mr Martin was shocked at the overcrowding and very poor facilities in some RTCs, with some of them having less average space per student than second-level schools.
All the politicians who spoke at yesterday's launch of the Education Technology Investment Fund emphasised that its budget - from revenue-rich Exchequer funds rather than the EU - would be over and above existing and continuing capital allocations for education.
"If we can't plan ahead now, when things are going so well, we'll never be able to plan ahead at all," one official said.