The Republic is rapidly running out of language graduates, and without a concerted effort by the Government the economy could suffer, a leading computer industry executive has said. The comments may alarm education specialists who have up to now concentrated mainly on encouraging more students to take computer courses.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Compaq Computer's vice president for sales, marketing and service in Britain and Ireland, Mr Joe McNally, said that the call centres in the Republic would soon have to seek significant numbers of non-Irish nationals purely for their language skills.
Compaq has close to 2,000 employees in the Republic, and plans further expansion as the company strives to reach its goal of being the third largest computer group in the world.
"What's happening is you're running out of capacity in Ireland," Mr McNally said. "We need intelligent graduates - which you are exceptionally good at providing because your education system is excellent. But we need to service France, Spain, Portugal, Italy - and you're running out of language skills."
"The net effect is that you are going to have to import them. But the problem for me, and I suspect for IBM and for Dell, is that because these skills are at a premium, and having made the investment in Ireland, we are a little bit concerned that these guys go around and tout themselves to the highest bidder. So you train an individual, and then he goes next door because somebody offers him £10 a week more," Mr McNally added.
Despite this issue, he said, Ireland was likely to play a central role in Compaq's new development strategy. The group has traditionally focused on making and selling PCs, but since the acquisition of Digital and Tandem it has adopted a new business model, based around being able to meet all the computer needs of its customers.
"What we're trying to do is position Compaq, for anyone in the computer arena, as `one-stopshopping' - to tell people that whatever you want, we can do it," Mr McNally said.
This would see Compaq acting not only as a supplier of computers to corporations, but also providing the expertise, on an ongoing basis, to maintain the best system for each business.
"We can also offer, if they need it, a total out-sourcing capability," he said. "I could say to AIB, for example, and say: `You have mainframe, mid-range, whatever. They may not all be Compaq, but I, Compaq, can take that over from you, offer full facilities management, I will procure the right hardware, procure the right systems, bring the right people to install it.' So for the first time, I'm viewed not as a supplier but as a strategic partner."
Such a direction allows Compaq to offer a bundled, value-added service that rivals such as Dell and Gateway 2000 cannot match without making major acquisitions themselves, Mr McNally said.
"That's the rationale behind it. And there's only one company today that can offer those skills right across the board, and that's IBM," he said.
The company now has an annual turnover of $35 billion but plans to boost that figure to $50 billion by the end of 2000, through organic growth and further acquisitions. Mr McNally said that despite his reservations about the future availability of Irish staff with language skills, Ireland would play a central role in Compaq's European strategy.
Compaq employs 250 people in its Dublin call centre, while 500 people work for its Digital plant in Galway and another 850 are employed in Digital's sales and call centre services in Dublin. The company also has a significant sales force across the country.
