More than 17,000 vacancies in the information technology (IT) sector remain unfilled, according to the latest survey from Dublin City University yesterday. The survey says the number of vacancies has doubled in the past two years.
Prof Michael Ryan of DCU said the figures suggest that the future IT skills gap in the economy is likely to be even wider than predicted by the reports of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs and other bodies. At present, accounting/finance job advertisements in Ireland outnumber those in IT by about 25 per cent.
"As long as it is possible to fill this gap by immigration, as is happening now, the severity of its impact will be reduced. Shortages elsewhere in Europe and competition from the USA, suggest however that this will be increasingly difficult," he said last night."
According to Prof Ryan: "In the longer term, we need to grow our own supply of experts in the core IT areas on which we will depend." The shortages indicated by the survey will become very serious, he said, unless we succeed in interesting both young and old in IT.
"We need to get across a more accurate picture of the career opportunities and broad educational benefits of an IT qualification.
"Unfortunately the echoes of the dot.com collapse still dominate most people's attitudes, and with computing effectively missing from the second-level syllabus, and no real understanding of professional careers in IT, it is hardly surprising that so few choose to study it.
"So far, the results of our attempts to remedy this have fallen well short of what is needed. It is a difficult and serious problem, which is not going to be easy to solve."
