IRELAND’S GAMES sector is growing but it has the potential to be much bigger, the head of an industry body has said.

Games Ireland’s chairman Barry O’Neill said the creative side of the industry needed to be built up, adding to work already being done by companies such as Popcap and Big Fish.

“A lot of the jobs we have in the games industry are Ireland Inc-type jobs – they’re shared services, localisation, support centres, online operations. And while they’re highly skilled roles they’re also highly transient roles.

“The biggest single thing we could do is incentivise companies to make games here instead of just supporting them.”

He said changes to the Special Assignee Relief Programme (SARP) in this week’s Finance Bill, which are aimed at bringing top executives to Ireland, were a welcome change and one of the key measures the group had been pushing for to help grow the games industry.

“Extending SARP was one of our key measures we said we need to attract in to Ireland in these areas of scarce skills – games producers, designers, product managers.

“I am impressed with what the Government has done in terms of the early-stage actions. You have to look at this as sort of a business planning process, where you’ve got your scoping and your implementation. They’ve done all the right things on the scoping; the implementation is taking longer than we’d like, but we have to be somewhat forgiving given the current climate.”

The global games industry is predicted to grow to $82.4 billion by 2015. The Irish games industry, which currently employs more than 2,000 people, has attracted some of the major global players, with Bioware, Activision and Zynga some of the firms that have located here.

According to a Forfás report published in October last year, employment in Ireland’s games industry could double to 4,500 provided the appropriate measures are taken. The report made a number of recommendations, including enhancing skills and education, attracting a talent pool to the country, and enhancing Ireland’s research and development schemes.

“The research and development programme we have in Ireland is absolutely fantastic for the really hardcore, technical and innovation side of games,” Mr O’Neill said. “But the fact is a lot of game production involves content production, which is considered to be a social science, which unfortunately is disqualified from research and development. However, this exclusion is set at a European level rather than a local government level.”

Games Ireland is due to hold a gathering of the industry in Dublin next week.