There was mixed news on the jobs front yesterday, with a major new project announced for Drogheda from a US company, but a decision by another, APC, to scale back on an investment project announced last year. The new investment, from DSC Communications, is to provide 475 jobs and recruitment is to get underway immediately.
DSC is the latest in a line of major projects announced this year. With IDA Ireland having such a fine record over the past couple of years, it would be churlish to focus too much on the decision of APC to abandon plans to establish in Gillogue, County Clare and Drogheda. It is, of course, regrettable that the expansion is not going ahead but the company already has a sizeable and expanding operation in Galway.
A few years ago it was fashionable to criticise the policy of attracting new multinational businesses to Ireland. Many of the multinational firms were only here to make a quick profit it was argued, and there should be more focus on developing Irish owned industry.
This argument was correct in part in that some areas of indigenous industry have been slow to develop. But the policy of attracting inward investment has yielded enormous benefits. It has given the economy strengths in sectors such as electronics, which could not have been developed otherwise and provided many thousands of jobs. Overseas companies are also now a major source of tax revenue to the exchequer; the IFSC alone generates over £200 million in tax each year.
All the signs are that the pipeline of new projects for Ireland remains strong and that further major jobs announcements can be expected in the months ahead. However the chief executive of IDA Ireland, Mr Kieran McGowan, warned recently that there was also a substantial number of jobs - perhaps as many as 3,000 at risk in vulnerable firms in the electronics sector alone.
Policy makers - and IDA Ireland itself cannot afford to sit back in the expectation that new projects will continue to flow into Ireland. The international economic environment is changing all the time, and Ireland will only continue to win its share if economic competitiveness continues to be developed.
This not only points up the need for taxation reform, but also underlines the necessity for a continued focus on areas such as telecommunications, infrastructure, technology and education. It also shows the importance of managers in existing multinational firms here - together with IDA Ireland seeking to be at the forefront of development within their corporations, rather than becoming vulnerable through reliance on old technologies and practices. IDA Ireland has done well to attract a string of high quality investment projects in recent months. But in the future, the race to attract mobile foreign investment is going to get increasingly competitive.