Unless we shift our focus and start investing in high-tech skills, we are simply going to be left behind, writes Senator Feargal Quinn.
When I graduated in 1960, Ireland was still mainly an agricultural economy. The Lemass/Whitaker revolution soon shifted the emphasis to manufacturing, which grew as the importance of agriculture dwindled. For nearly half a century, manufacturing has been the driver of our economic growth, mainly, of course, manufacturing by foreign-owned firms attracted here by the IDA. High-tech manufacturing was at the heart of the Celtic Tiger.
Now, the importance of manufacturing has already passed its peak. Our initial attraction as a low-cost location is gone; now we must move far and fast up the value chain to compete. But the most important shift is not in the costs of manufacturing, but the bypassing of manufacturing itself as the driver. Say hello to the information society.
Already services are the dominant sector in our economy, passing out manufacturing and leaving agriculture trailing far behind. But not all services are a solid foundation for future growth and prosperity; services that are traded only within our own country can never be more than the icing on the cake. For the cake itself we must look to services that are traded internationally. Only by succeeding in this area can we create the wealth to spend within our own borders.
This is why the Information Society is so important to our future. It is not just the arena in which we must operate, it also provides us with the means to perform well. Ireland, so long hampered both by our remote geographical position and our small size, is now moving into an era where these traditional disadvantages no longer apply.
In the information society, the world becomes one, and how you perform depends not on how big you are but how smart. One example of this is the emergence of Skype, a company that has turned the world of telecommunications upside down. Where did it come from? Estonia - a tiny country far more backward in many respects than Ireland. We should ask ourselves: why there? Why not in Cork?
We do not have to look very far into the future to envisage a situation in which all serious manufacturing will take place in Asia, driven there by the inexorable mechanisms of cost. But more significant still is the threat Asia will pose in services that are driven by brain-power. Even leaving aside China, the recent mushrooming of high-value services in India should disabuse us of the notion that there is automatically a secure place for Ireland in the new era.
I believe there can be a place for us, but only if we prepare properly for it. This is why we should take the information society very seriously indeed. And do we not? Well, here are three indicators of just how low on our priority list it is.
First, where is the Information Society Commission?
This body, under the aegis of the Taoiseach and working within his department, was intended to be our guiding beacon in making the transformation to the new era. Setting it up was a promising sign that the challenge was recognised, right at the top of government. But since the three-year term of the last commission ended in 2004, it has not been replaced. If we take the issue seriously, this is an inexcusable oversight.
Second, we are failing to develop the skills we will need.
There is an increasing need for technical skills, to harness the new technology and to drive forward innovation based on it. Yet in the face of this increasing demand, what is happening? Incredibly, supply is being allowed to fall off.
According to a recent study, within the next two years Ireland will plummet from third to 21st place in a European league table measuring information and communications technology skills. According to analyst firm IDC, we will have an 18.7 per cent skills gap between supply and demand in the ICT sector by 2008. This is above the predicted European average of 15.8 per cent and is an increase from a 5.7 per cent gap in Ireland today. At the moment we are 1,200 people short of what we need, and that number is set to grow.
This is simply madness. It is one thing to be taken unaware by unexpected events. It is completely different to fail to respond to a situation that everyone can see coming down the tracks. Unless we close this gap - instead of allowing it widen every year - we simply don't deserve to succeed.
Third, we are failing to equip ourselves with a required tool for the new age - universal broadband access to the internet, available to everyone at an affordable price.
Broadband is the basic enabling technology for the information age. Without it we can not only do nothing, we can't even realise what we are missing. People who experience the internet only by way of dial-up cannot imagine the effect of being plugged in to the world, at high speed, all the time. It is only people brought up with this experience at the centre of their lives who can hope to exploit fully the potential of the information society.
So clearly, we should be right out at the front of the pack in adopting broadband and promoting its use.
Tragically, the very opposite is the case. Consistently over the past five years, we have been near the bottom of every international league table of broadband penetration. We have made some recent faltering progress, but our competitors have done more - so our relative position has not changed at all.
For the majority of our people (and worse, the majority of our businesses) still to be without access to affordable broadband is nothing short of a scandal. It makes nonsense of all the high-flown rhetoric about it being a national aim to achieve leadership in the new information age.
Until we begin to take the information society seriously, that will never happen.