Shortages of computer staff are likely in future - Dell

Skilled staff are becoming increasingly hard to find in the Republic and training programmes are unlikely to solve the problem in the short term, the head of Dell's European, Middle Eastern and African operations has said.

Mr Jan Gesmar Larsen, who has responsibility for Dell's operations in Bray and Limerick, said while the company was not currently experiencing skill "shortages", there was some concern about the future. He was speaking to The Irish Times after addressing the IMI conference in Killarney, Co Kerry at the weekend.

"Like all other IT companies operating in Ireland we have to live with the fact that there are limited resources in terms of staff," he said. While there was a shortage of skilled people all over Europe, it was probably marginally worse in the Republic, he added. Responding to questions from delegates, he said the dearth of skilled staff was forcing companies to "steal" employees from their competitors.

He said because of this Dell was concentrating on retaining staff, by offering them an attractive stock option scheme.

He welcomed recent Government initiatives to train the unemployed for vacancies in the IT sector, but said such programmes would take "several years" before they could produce the kind of high-skilled people required by the leading IT companies.

Mr Larsen said the whole of Europe suffered from a lack of investment in IT, when compared with the United States. He pointed out that in terms of GDP, the United States spent almost three times the amount spent in the EU.

He said rates of personal computer ownership in the EU were still far behind the US and IT companies were failing to penetrate into European homes.

He said there were several "inhibitors" to the growth of the Internet across Europe, including lack of bandwidth, old legacy systems, lack of standards and "perceptions" that Internet security was lax. "One of the problems is the governments of Europe do not have a unified policy to promote the Internet among children and the public generally," he told the conference. However, he said the Irish government had shown "leadership" in developing Internet services and the associated technologies like broadband.

"In continental Europe a lot of people perceive the Internet as being connected to pornography, whereas here in Ireland people see it as a way to get information," he said.

Mr Larsen said Dell had recently begun its latest recruitment drive - looking for 1,400 people for phase three of its European Manufacturing Facility (EMF) in Limerick.