Talk Back

Competitiveness is key to Ireland's future, writes BRIAN MOONEY

AT THE RECENT launch of the National Competitiveness Council annual report, chairman Don Thornhill, said “the single biggest challenge for Ireland in 2010 is to create jobs and reduce unemployment”. He said skills development is critical in supporting the competitiveness of existing firms and enhancing their capability.

He also said targeted education funding could play a key role in enhancing the skills base of the existing labour force and the unemployed, and help meet the future skills needs of our growth sectors. The third-level sector needs to play an important role in this process, he said.

There are skills deficits in key areas of our economy. For example, increased regulation has resulted in a need for specialised skills in the medical technologies, chemicals and pharmaceuticals sector, which has grown from 32 per cent of exports in 2000 to 51 per cent in 2008, leading to a surge in interest in science degrees among CAO applicants.

The international financial services sectors have also grown hugely over the past eight years, up from 12 per cent to 29 per cent of services exports. The service sector has increased by 500 per cent in the past decade.

Both of the above sectors are made up mostly of multinational companies attracted into Ireland by the IDA, based on factors, which according to many participants in last September’s Global Irish Economic Forum 2009, no longer exist. The National Competitiveness Council annual report points out, the urgent need to rebuild our competitiveness, if we are to retain the growth which these sectors have provided.

Many of our indigenous industries are in crisis. The tourism and hospitality industry is a prime example. Tax incentives offered to developers have led to a huge increase in the physical infrastructure of our hotels and leisure facilities. Today, we are saddled with more than 20,000 additional hotel rooms that nobody can fill. The principal of “build them and they will come” has proved to be very wide of the mark.

This industry, which at one time employed more than 250,000 people, now employs less than 200,000 and its share of our services earnings has dropped from 17 per cent in 2000 to just six per cent today. Fáilte Ireland is responding to this crisis in two specific ways.

Firstly, it is reaching out to individual employers running hospitality facilities throughout the country to help them present their product more effectively in 2010. The internet is where the international tourist market is now played out. But many hotel workers have very poor IT skills and their hotels have a poor presence on the web. Unless we can enhance their IT skills, we will not see a recovery in this vital economic sector.

Secondly, Fáilte Ireland has revamped the structure of full-time education and training in the hospitality industry. It is working with the Institute of Technology sector to develop four new level 6 Higher Certificate programmes, which are now on offer through the CAO. This development is so recent that these new courses are not printed in the current CAO handbook, but are list on the www.picktourism.ie website.

Current CAO applicants who are interested in courses in Bar Supervision, Culinary Arts, Hospitality Studies and Tourism can list these courses on their current CAO application. Now that they will be an integral part of the IT sector they can progress onto degree programmes – thus enhancing the skills base of the overall industry.