PROPOSALS TO establish Ireland as a “global media hub” and a “data island” have been announced as the two winning ideas in “Your Country, Your Call” competition.
The competition was initiated in February by Dr Martin McAleese, husband of President Mary McAleese, to find two ideas that would create prosperity and jobs for Ireland.
The proposers of the two winning ideas – Neil Leyden and father and son duo Colm MacFhlannachadha and Cianán Clancy– received their commemorative trophy and €100,000 each at an awards presentation in Dublin last night attended by President McAleese. The two proposals will now go into a development phase and each will be supported by an advisory group and a development fund of €500,000 each.
The global media hub proposal came from screen writer and digital media consultant Neil Leyden.
He said the content industry should be treated as a new industry for the 21st century, just as the pharmaceutical and financial services industries were prioritised in recent years.
The plan involves creating a legislative and regulatory environment “to make Ireland the global capital for distribution and creation of content”.
He said it would involve creating an Irish content industry association and a media park to attract global content industries. The proposal envisages the creation of in the region of 45,000 jobs directly and indirectly.
The data island strategy proposed by Cianán Clancy and Colm MacFhlannachadha involves developing green “mega data centres” in excess of 200,000sq ft each and developing an international innovation area. Employment in the region of 4,000 jobs is envisaged by the proposal.
Mr Clancy said that between now and 2020, the amount of data created and distributed worldwide would grow by 44 times. Data is anything created and distributed on the web. The plan envisages placing Ireland in a world leading position in areas such as cloud computing, secure information storage and online gaming development.
Dr Martin McAleese said it was very satisfying to get to the point where the two selected proposals could now go into the implementation stage. “We look forward to realising the ambition of Your Country, Your Call which was prosperity and jobs for Ireland”.
The competition generated almost 9,000 entries before the April closing date. They were whittled down to 150 proposals, then 40 and then 20 before the five finalists were chosen earlier this month. The three other finalists were:
O’Brien’s Sandwich Bar founder Brody Sweeney who proposed creating a “super brand” to market Irish tourism and food.
Gordan Hyland who proposed establishing an intellectual property services centre, anchored around an IP-based exchange.
Peter Enda Kavanagh who proposed installing large-scale solar photovoltaic panels on existing wind farm sites.
Chairman of the judging panel, former EU commissioner David Byrne, said the judging process was “extremely rigorous” and was independently audited from start to finish. President McAleese noted that the competition was run by volunteers, all busy people who offered their time and services free of charge. “They are people who love Ireland. They are people who believe in Ireland.”
She said the competition was launched in February at a time when pessimism and disappointment reigned. There was still plenty of pessimism but the economy was beginning to return to growth; exports were increasing and people were “flooding” back to college to prepare themselves for the upturn.
