The good news on the jobs front continues to flow over 550 jobs are to be created in Dublin at a new European Customer Care Centre by Compaq, one of the world's largest computer companies. The announcement represents another considerable coup for the IDA, which last year reported a record year for job creation. The authority's prescience in very deliberately targeting the teleservices sector is paying off.
Compaq is the latest in a long list of leading companies which have agreed to locate their teleservices in the Republic only two months ago, Hertz, the world's leading car rental company, confirmed a 600-job teleservice centre at Swords, Co Dublin. The Compaq case is as noteworthy. The company, a world leader in personal computers, already has several teleservice centres dotted around Europe; its decision to centralise operations in Dublin represents a strong vote of confidence in Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure and in the high calibre of young Irish workers. On past evidence, the Compaq project can only help to further consolidate Ireland's strength in the international teleservices sector. The record to date is outstanding; a total of 43 such projects, generating over 4,000 jobs, have now been established in Ireland - some 1,500 above the IDA's own jobs target. It is estimated that the sector has the potential to employ at least 5,000 by the end of the decade.
The Compaq project means that the IDA has attracted many of the world's leading computer manufacturing companies to Ireland. Dell, AST, Gateway and Apple already have a strong Irish presence. Few will begrudge the IDA this achievement but sceptics among the science/technology community and beyond would argue that this industrial base has been created despite rather than because of Government policy.
Certainly, there is much work to be done if Ireland is to maximise its potential as Europe's computer capital. There is, clearly, a pool of young multi-lingual graduates for whom relatively low-paid jobs like teleservices provides an ideal entry point into employment. But the computer industry itself has voiced concern to the Government in recent weeks about a potential skills shortage and the need to train more software and electronic engineers. It is also the case, notwithstanding Ireland's strong record of inward investment, that indigenous science and technology innovation has been sadly neglected. Education policies, in particular, need to be much more clearly focused towards the needs of this specialised industry.
The Government's White Paper on Science and Technology was meant to inject a new dynamic into the whole debate. Some progress has been achieved in helping to better co-ordinate policy among Government Departments, but there is still a strong sense that science and technology matters are low on the Government's list of priorities. This is regrettable. Of its nature, the computer industry is prone to radical, rapid and fundamental change. The Government must anticipate change, not react to it.