THE MANAGING director of Hewlett-Packard Ireland said yesterday that Ireland’s educated workforce and high standard of technical and language skills offered by graduates was the main reason why HP chose to create 60 new high-level jobs in Ireland rather than in other European countries.
Yesterday HP, which employs over 4,000 people in Ireland at facilities in Dublin, Leixlip, Galway and Belfast, announced it is to expand operations at its Global Solutions Centre in Belfield, with the creation of 60 jobs. Martin Murphy told The Irish Times that the company had benchmarked Ireland against other European companies when choosing the location for the expansion.
“We chose Ireland because the workforce has the combination of language and technical skills that the company needs,” he said.
Mr Murphy added that while the issue of graduate quality and education standards had been an issue for some of his corporate counterparts, this had not been the case for HP.
While he welcomed the publication of the report on grade inflation, he said that other issues needed to be prioritised, particularly the modernisation of the education system at primary and secondary level.
“If we are going to position Ireland as a nation that provides international services to global customers, then we need to have the technical, language and management skills necessary to ensure that we are on top of this.”
He said that a virtual-learning environment should be the norm in schools, with all pupils and teachers equipped with a laptop.
Transition year should also be used as a platform to get students engaged with industry and business thought processes, he said. “The introduction of free education in the 1960s meant that we produced a highly educated workforce 15 years later.
“In the same way, we need to refresh and modernise our system to make sure we are well-positioned for future developments.”
