Dot.com gurus praise Irish high-tech success

Despite declining stocks, layoffs and cancelled orders, the chief executives of major US Internet companies yesterday hailed an interconnected future of efficiency and wealth, and heaped praise on Ireland as a model for a fast-moving world.

A two-day Global Internet Summit - the first such gathering since the collapse of dot.com companies and the fall of technology stocks on the Nasdaq - heard the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, join in the spirit of optimism by painting a rosy, interconnected future for Ireland.

"We are confident that if we create the right environment we will not only successfully navigate the shoals of the Global Internet as its value chain travels through hardware to software to content, but will prosper in the process," she told the conference at George Mason University in Virginia.

Earlier Ms Harney met the new US Commerce Secretary, Mr Donald Evans, to "touch base with the Bush administration and continue the good relations built up over previous years", her spokesman said.

Mr Evans accepted an invitation to visit Ireland soon. "Anywhere that offers 24 per cent return on investment for US companies is a place worth seeing," he said.

On Tuesday, the Tanaiste visited four companies in the Philadelphia area that are considering investment in Ireland - defying a much-hyped snowstorm which threatened to upset the schedule of her weeklong US tour.

Both Ms Harney and Mr Brendan Tuohy, Secretary General of the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, who addressed the conference separately, emphasised the importance of Ireland's culture in the growth of the knowledge economy.

Her confidence about continuing Ireland's success, Ms Harney said, arose from the history of creativity which had found expression from the art and literature of Wilde, Joyce, Yeates, Beckett and Heaney, to the music of the Boomtown Rats and Samantha Mumba, adding, "if you don't know the latter, you will soon".

Mr Tuohy, who outlined the strategy of the Government in liberalising telecommunications, rolling out broadband and providing inter-connectivity, warned that the "debate between business and technology hasn't engaged the poets, musicians, authors and artists, who have an awful lot to offer".

By contrast, the vision painted by the star speaker of the conference, Mr John Chambers, President and chief executive of Cisco Systems, was of an era when "wave after wave of applications will change our lives" as "almost all electronic devices will obtain Internet connections and everything will be cheaper".

"I truly believe what we are talking about is the second industrial revolution," declared Mr Chambers with evangelical fervour, despite seeing the value of his networking equipment stocks fall 70 per cent in the last year in the US economic slowdown. "The fast beats the slow," he said. "The Internet and education will determine which countries get ahead and which get left behind."

Later Mr Chambers, whose company is the world's leading maker of networking equipment, blamed the US economy for pulling back from a proposed investment in Dublin last summer.

"The reason we didn't go ahead was because it [the economy] was slowing down," he told The Irish Times. "We have nothing but positive things to say about Ireland. We are still keeping our options open. Ireland has done a wonderful job."

Also emphasising infrastructure and education as the future in the information age, Ms Harney said spending by the Republic on education had increased 40 per cent in the past three years and now accounted for 28 per cent of government spending. More than 60 per cent of school leavers continue on to third level.

"Six out of 10 graduates we produce hold degrees in engineering, science or business studies, and the output of graduate software engineers is higher in Ireland than it is in Germany," she said.

Many chief executives interviewed at the conference acknowledged the downturn had shaken up the Internet world. But firms with good business models would survive, said Mr Vinton Cerf, a vice president of the telecommunications leader, WorldCom Inc. "It's like a forest fire. We're learning that forest fires are helpful for sustaining growth over time."