Ireland can create 117,000 jobs by 2020, says report

The Innovation Taskforce report says that if Ireland wants to create these jobs, however, it will have to significantly increase its current rate of job creation and new company start-ups.

The report is also calling for the establishment of an ‘innovation ecosystem’, with entrepreneurs and enterprises, both indigenous and foreign-owned, at its centre.

It also says that Ireland needs a “sea-change” in both public and private attitudes towards innovation and entrepreneurship to recognise that such activities involve risk, and occasionally result in failure.

In this vein, the report suggests that personal bankruptcy legislation needs to be reformed to ensure that legal arrangements avoid any sense of stigma from a failed business venture, provided there has been a reasonable approach to business risk.

Other recommendations contained in the report include:

• Introduce a European Accelerator Programme to attract the European HQs of fast-growing private US companies
• Encourage overseas entrepreneurs to come to Ireland to start and grow their companies
• Ensure greater and more co-ordinated public research investment
• Nurture of a national portfolio of Business Angel funds
• Develop a national intellectual property (IP) protocol
• Foster entrepreneurial skills at third and fourth-level
• Raise the competence levels in maths and sciences in second level
• Accelerate the provision of high-quality broadband nationwide

The report also calls for Enterprise Ireland to increasingly focus on start-up and early stage activities, and says both IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland need to co-operate more with each other.

The taskforce said its aim is that by 2020 Ireland will have a “significant number of large, world leading, innovation-intensive companies, each having a global footprint, many of which are Irish-headquartered and owned”.

It also said that its forecast of 117,000 jobs being created by Ireland’s transformation into an innovation hub is at the lower end of its projections.

Ambitious but doable, says Taoiseach
Welcoming the report, the Taoiseach Brian Cowen TD said the Taskforce's recommendations to make Ireland a global innovation hub were ambitious, but that he believed it can be done.

“In fact, as the Taskforce point out, we have no choice but to make it happen if Ireland is to create the jobs we need,” he said.

Also welcoming the Taskforce's report, the Minister for Communications Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan TD said: “This Government recognises that we need to forge a new economy; we need to stimulate and invest in ourselves.”

A unique culture among multinationals
Dermot McCarthy, secretary general of the Department of An Taoiseach, said the debate at present needs to be around start-ups and how these companies will be the growth engine that will put Ireland on the road to recovery.

Anna Scally from KPMG said a key facet would be making it easier for entrepreneurs and start-ups to sell to the State: “It’s about the Government providing a framework where the entrepreneurs will create the jobs. This is about the State buying innovative services, encouraging people to take the risk knowing that if they fail they won’t be punished and they can try again and again.”

It was also pointed out that the large number of multinationals in Ireland have a unique culture that isn’t often seen even in Silicon Valley. “The heads of the US multinationals all know each other and talk to each other regularly whereas in the US they only get to talk in courts. Here they meet and talk, that’s an opportunity,” said Scally.

Innovation hub is achievable
Havok co-founder Steven Collins who now runs Kore Virtual Machines said: “There is a real opportunity to be the innovation hub for Europe, it is achievable.”

“The fact that we have so many overseas firms in our economy means there’s many opportunities to channel to the global market, to take unused intellectual property and license it to start-ups and significantly within multinationals there’s opportunities to work across different sectors,” said Chris Horn, co-founder of Iona Technologies.

FG criticises lack of timetable
However, Fine Gael criticised the report, saying there it did not include a timetable for implementation.

The report also does not contain any specific details of the costs involved in each of its recommendations.

To read the report of the Innovation Taskforce in full, visit www.innovationtaskforce.ie

Photo: Chris Horn, one of the members of the Government's Innovation Taskforce