A key factor in multinational companies coming to Ireland was the finding of a recent world competitiveness report that this country has the second-best education system in the world, a Dublin conference heard. The public affairs manager of Hewlett-Packard, Ms Una Halligan, told the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland's annual education conference in Dublin that this was evidence of Ireland "getting it right" and a reason why leading high-technology companies such as HewlettPackard, IBM and Intel were responsible for 40 per cent of recent employment growth in the State.
The 1996 World Competitiveness Report puts the Irish education system second to Singapore's out of 46 countries. The report, published annually by a company of the same name, is highly regarded by governments and industrial development agencies as a guide to international rankings in over 100 categories ranging from economic growth to social values.
However, Ms Halligan warned about the problem of imminent and serious skills shortages unless the focus of the education system was changed to emphasise IT and other new technologies.
She said Hewlett-Packard would increase its workforce in Leixlip from 1,200 to 3,000 over the next four years. Intel is doubling its workforce to 7,000 over the same period and IBM is creating 3,000 new jobs over the next five years.
When such companies looked for recruits, they saw "glaring gaps", particularly in the supply of mechanical, electrical and electronic technicians. The education system currently produced about 750 such technicians annually, while industry conservatively estimated that more than 2,000 would be needed every year for the next three years.
Ms Halligan said there was a lack of awareness among parents, teachers and students - particularly female students - that there were "good jobs" in this technical sector.
At the same time many traditional jobs in medicine, veterinary, law and finance were "being eroded to a large extent by the very technology that companies like ourselves are providing". She gave the example of banking as an area where IT was replacing many traditional jobs, while "back office" and call-centre jobs, which many students were not prepared for, were expanding.
Ms Halligan said that until information technology was an integral part of teacher training, and both the primary and secondary curricula, it would not be taken seriously, would not be examined, and therefore would be ignored. "Most importantly, I feel strongly that teachers must have the resources to enable them to shift from `chalk plus talk' to the new IT world", she said.
Dr Thomas O'Dwyer, the European Commission's director-general for education, training and youth, said there had been little press comment on the inclusion in the Amsterdam Treaty of the right of access to lifelong learning as one of the nine goals of the Community, alongside free trade and economic and social cohesion.
The inclusion reflected "the increasingly central place which education has come to occupy in European Union debate". This was despite the fact that resources allocated to education, training and youth represent only 0.44 per cent of the EU budget, compared to 44 per cent for agriculture.
He said last week's Council of Education Ministers, which many people did not even know existed, adopted a text encouraging member-states to facilitate foreign-language learning at an early age. The EU's aim was that as many pupils as possible should have a practical knowledge of two foreign languages.