It takes more than technology

Just back from a pleasant, if damp, visit to Ireland which coincided with the Olympics (great) and the annual college placement frenzy for Irish 18 yr olds as results from the Leaving Certificate are released. Ireland is facing up to a post-Tiger economy (the cab driver told me the tiger had ‘lost its voice long ago’) and house prices are slipping, bars are emptier but prices keep rising. Several generations of politicians from all major parties have taken the credit over the last 20 years for the upturn, built off, we were told, carefully planned strategic investments in two areas: pharmaceuticals and information technology. Many companies invested in the country as it was blessed with a highly educated, young workforce eager to find a job at home. That the country did not have much by way of indigenous IT and pharma-companies was deemed irrelevant, these would be imported and would sink deep roots that effectively made them part of the scenery. Oddly, now, it seems this is not working (duh!). The tax-breaks that lured them are being beaten by competitor economies outside Europe. Educated kids from Eastern Europe, Poland in particular, flocked to Ireland to take positions that the locals no longer wanted. And now, insult to injury, it seems 18 year olds want to go to college to be lawyers and doctors, not software engineers. Universities are dropping the requirements for admission to engineering and computer science in order to attract more students but its having little effect and the feisty Irish media, one of the best in the world, is starting to ask questions about just how embedded in the culture is the ambition to be a leading knowledge economy. The government, every one of them since the boon began, seems to have actually done very little to encourage greater emphasis in the schools on relevant subjects and it would seem that Ireland’s image as a hotbed of hi-tech workers is fading. Business leaders are pressing the Minister of Education to address the issue. Amazingly, for political parties that all had the foresight (really!) to create the booming economy single-handedly out of their brilliant insights and policies, no body thought of the supply of talent at the schools level. Makes you wonder…..