Employment in the multimedia industry is expected to grow by about 500 per cent over the next five years, outstripping growth in more traditional audio-visual sectors such as film and television production by a considerable margin.
The manager of Forbairt's international services division, Mr Declan Murphy, told a conference in Galway the industry was of increasing importance to the economy.
"There are approximately 120 Irish companies in operation in the multimedia sector alone employing about 2,000 people. This figure is expected to grow to approximately 12,000 by the year 2003," he said.
The Big Picture conference was organised by Forbairt and Udaras na Gaeltachta and brought together film, television and multimedia specialists in a discussion about future trends and challenges. One of the most thought-provoking contributions came from a "new media" consultant with Arista, Mr Richard White.
Current strategies by State bodies such as IDA Ireland, which aimed at attracting multinational investment, were "fatally flawed," he said. They focused on infrastructure and ignored the need to invest in "new forms of non-linear storytelling" which would drive the industry in the future.
"What will you do in 20 years time when the Czech Republic or Hungary offers the multinationals better financial incentives to build the new plants that they need, and a first-time workforce prepared to train for a radically new skills base? What will you be able to offer that is fresh and original?"
Mr White said the answer was culture, which in computer entertainment terms meant the ability to tell stories.
"Now, you're Irish, and that may mean that understandably enough you take the idea of storytelling for granted. Well, you mustn't, for if you do it is my belief that in 20 years time two things will happen.
"The first is that an entrenched industry geared up for particular products and hardware platforms will be submerged in the backwash left by new delivery mechanisms and distribution methodologies.
"The second is that the flood tide of externally produced entertainment product which will wash over you will make what you now consider to be cultural imperialism seem like the halcyon days when Ireland was the dominant force in the English-speaking cultural arena."
The global computer entertainment industry (everything from coin-operated arcade games to computer games and educational packages on CD-ROM and on the Internet) is now larger than the US film and music industries put together. It is controlled by a small number of multimedia giants, but this is set to change as new distribution methods break their stranglehold on the market. "We talk about the current breed of faceless accountants in the film business. But let me tell you, the guys that run the distribution of the interactive industry might just as well be selling shoes. And some of them probably did."
Digital distribution methods would move multimedia products from crowded shelves in specialist stores into the living-room. That would mean radical changes in their nature.
At the moment the industry was only communicating with a small section of its potential audience, with products aimed at "adolescent boys between 14 and 35". That would change to a wider audience, who would demand interactive storytelling.
"I think the future of interactive entertainment will elaborate into three strands," he said. "In the first is some kind of cinema-like immersive experience, in which you follow a story and there are narrative mechanisms which make you want to interact.
"The second is you are linked with other people and you share in the uncovering and/or creation of a story in some way.
"The third are products whose narrative style, if you like, derives from painting, architecture, performance art and installation work."
All this highlighted the pressing need to train people in the new media.
"New media is just another grammar, just another set of tools for communicating the same messages. It may have different rules and it may require you to work in different ways. But at the end of the day it just offers you another colour to add to your creative palette.
"Don't make the mistake of believing that what I'm talking about is a business opportunity . . . This is about an opportunity to be involved in the creation of a new medium. The opportunity to be an Einstein, a Beckett or a Picasso."