IDA changes focus to securing more high quality posts as growth dwindles

Mr John Dunne says the "ultimate compliment" to IDA Ireland would be to create a situation in which there was no need at all for the agency. As its chairman, however, he dismisses suggestions that virtual full employment means that that time has already arrived.

"It's arguable, but I think not," he says.

Still, IDA Ireland this week confirmed it would no longer confine its role to the pursuit of jobs per se. Indeed, the word "job" does not even appear in a redrafted mission statement.

It says: "We will win for Ireland, its people and regions, the best in international innovation and investment so as to contribute to the continued transformation of Ireland to a world-leading society which is rich in creativity, learning, and personal and social well-being."

If such talk foresees a place for the Republic in the premier league of nations, Mr Dunne says IDA Ireland will be crucial to the task. "If we weren't around, we'd have to be reinvented."

Reinvention is the buzzword in IDA Ireland - and its core task has changed. Last year, for the first time, it reduced its job creation target to 12,000 from a record 17,800 in 1999.

This was a radical departure for a body whose sole task was to increase jobs when unemployment was high. As it happened, however, there was no reduction and 2000 became another record year for the agency. It helped create 24,717 positions, leading to a net increase of 16,415 when redundancies are counted.

There are no targets this year, save for an "internal" one for jobs in the Border, Midland and Western (BMW) region now prioritised by the Government. Yet the agency has warned that the pace of jobs growth will slow this year to 12,000.

This reflects the US downturn and slower European growth too. Only when Intel restarts construction work on its vaunted Fab 24 plant at Leixlip, Co Kildare, will the agency be happy that the technology sector has turned the corner.

"There's a great need for us to understand that we're in a cyclical period at the moment in the high-tech area."

Does Mr Dunne fear Intel will abandon the project altogether? No, he says, citing comments by the chief executive of the US giant, Dr Craig Barrett, who said last month that it expected to resume construction early next year.

Intel, of course, is very much an IDA Ireland flagship and the company is seen as a proxy for the entire tech sector because its chips are used by all the big computer makers. It received £3.5 million (€4.4 million) last year from the agency, though that was just a fraction of the £104.1 million received before then.

When Intel made 1,400 construction workers redundant in March, the move was a clear sign that a lasting recession in the US could have a very deep impact here.

Mr Dunne is conscious of the danger. A former director general of employers' lobby group IBEC, he well remembers bleak years before the boom when unemployment was dismally high and growth was non-existent. There was no talk of becoming a "world-leading society".

"There is a whole generation of people who have absolutely no experience of that. Those of us who have, have to keep looking over our shoulders. I think there needs to be a greater sense of reality about what is attainable. It's hard for the generation in their 20s and 30s to realise how awful it was."

So how does Mr Dunne characterise the scene now? And can full employment be sustained?

"I think we're in a pretty strong position. I don't think the level of growth we had was sustainable. I think it's healthy that we should have a reduction in that level of growth, provided that reduction is not so sharp that you have a very negative impact on individual people."

He adds: "If the right policies are pursued, very high employment is sustainable into the future. We're optimistic, but only on the basis that we can drive employment in Ireland up the value chain." On policy, Mr Dunne says completion of the National Development Plan on time is crucial. "The major imperative now is to make sure that that plan works."

Citing delays in the planning process such as local objections to certain major projects, he adds: "The important thing is that, for the first time, we have the wherewithal to deal with these things.

"People have got to accept that we need electricity, telecoms and road infrastructure, and we have to stop having an individual begrudgery attitude towards that."

He is aware also that IDA Ireland is facing greater competition for large-scale projects than ever before from economies with lower wage rates.

Last December, for example, the Republic lost a project to Hungary that would have employed 1,000 people in high end positions.

Also last year, a reported investment by Cisco Systems failed to materialise. "There's no doubt that we were talking to Cisco and Cisco were talking to us, but unfortunately everyone we talk to doesn't sign on the bottom line. If and when the cycle turns, and if Cisco decides to invest, I would hope that we would still be on the agenda."

On jobs in general, Mr Dunne says simply counting the numbers is no longer the best measure of success. High quality posts are more productive in the economic sense; they drive growth.

Here, the thinking at IDA Ireland is clear. The emphasis has switched to developing "strategic business areas" and other initiatives instead of attracting individual projects.

The agency will focus on three "magnets of development" outside the major centres of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Dundalk.

It is relocating 50 of its 200 staff in Dublin to Athlone, Sligo and Waterford because those areas have fared "less well" in the boom.

In addition, IDA Ireland wants to create clusters of excellence, which it describes as areas "in which groups of companies, corporate and academic research facilities, venture capitalists and others would congregate".

Elements of that plan involve creating tighter links with Enterprise Ireland, the State body that supports indigenous industry. It was separated from IDA Ireland in 1994 and Mr Dunne says a re-merger is unlikely.

"I just see it as a question of getting greater understanding that is common to all of us which, if we work together on, we will have greater success."

Beyond the strategic talk, the focus remains on securing big projects on the international scene.

In that context, did Mr Dunne agree that revelations at the tribunals sent the "wrong signals" about Irish business?

"I think that's true. I don't think that what has come out of the tribunals creates a good impression but that's nearly axiomatic. I would like that what comes out would come out in the short term and that we would deal with it.

"I wouldn't want to underestimate the desirability of cleaning up our act."