IDA plans technology centre for midlands

The Industrial Development Agency will bring plans to Government within the next few months for a major new technology centre to be developed in the midlands.

The IDA chief executive, Mr Seán Dorgan, said he believed the flagship project would attract foreign firms to the Republic and not just the midlands.

It is to be developed in association with the University of Buffalo, in New York state, as well as NUI Galway, the University of Ulster, Dublin City University and Athlone Institute of Technology.

Essentially a research and development facility serving the pharmaceutical and bio-chemical industries, the facility is, pending Government approval, to be developed at the IDA business park in Athlone with links to hospitals and industry.

The State investment is expected to be in the region of €70 million to €80 million, while the total cost is expected to be up to three times that amount.

Confirming that the project was at an advanced stage yesterday, Mr Dorgan told The Irish Times that the agency was disappointed that a similar project involving General Electric and Dublin City University did not come to fruition.

But he said the agency had put two years' work into its current proposal, which, he believed, would become a "unique facility" attracting firms to Ireland.

While the project would be based in Athlone and had obvious tie-ins with companies such as élan, it should be seen as a regional driver of growth and would also tie in with Tyco in Tullamore and other such businesses across the State and worldwide.

Mr Dorgan was speaking after his address to a seminar on regional development hosted by the Midlands Regional Authority in the Athlone Institute of Technology yesterday.

The seminar heard a number of speakers, including representatives of multinational companies located in the region, explain why they came to settle on the Republic as a base for their enterprises.

Mr Peter Callan, president of Sennheiser International Manufacturing, said the reasons his company initially came to Ireland were not the same reasons why it ultimately decided to stay.

Founded in 1945 as a specialist research laboratory, Sennheiser has grown to become a world leader in the development of electro-acoustic technologies and professional audio products.

Mr Callan said the company came to the midlands from Hanover, attracted by a low-cost economy and an "ability to get things done". However, over the years the low-wage economic environment had receded and the ability to get things done had dissolved in delays with major infrastructural works.

Mr Callan said his business had survived in Tullamore because it had effectively "moved up the chain" outsourcing elements of its production to the Far East, but managing that outsourcing from Tullamore.

It was dependent on a world-class, skilled and educated workforce, which was available in the midlands, and which was another factor in keeping the company there.

But he said he was disappointed that the "can do" ability had dissipated. He said the region needed to focus on the image which Ireland now projected to its international customers, not just in terms of the available infrastructure but in terms of transport, hotels, leisure facilities and services, "which are part of any visit to Ireland whether for business or pleasure".