Ireland needs to enter a Celtic Phoenix era during which the nation uses confidence and pride to restore the Irish economy, technology entrepreneur Chris Horn has told the Fine Gael annual conference in Killarney.
Mr Horn said that the environment that facilitated the Celtic Tiger was over.
Ireland no longer has a global monopoly on low costs and a low corporate tax rate, nor on a technology skilled and English language competent labour pool, he said.
The founder of Iona Technologies was also a member of the Innovation Task Force which recently reported to Government. He reiterated its key message to the conference today, saying that there was enormous scope to build Ireland as the place in Europe for innovation, new products and services. He said a concerted effort would have to be made to attract risk and venture capital to Ireland if that were to be achieved.
“I believe we have an enormous opportunity. The Celtic Tiger is over. Now it is the Celtic Phoenix,” he said. “We need to believe in ourselves, we need to have confidence in our ability; and we need to have pride in Ireland.”
Mr Horn was a keynote speaker at the party’s session on employment, enterprise and jobs this morning, as was the financial adviser Eddie Hobbs.
Mr Horn told delegates that the smart economy was really Ireland winning confidence in our public sector, winning with new practical ideas, and winning worldwide with innovative products and services.
Many economists will tell you we need to rebuild our banks, de-leverage our assets and restore competitiveness. Many economists will tell you we need to roll back the clock to the good years of the Celtic Tiger, before our property bubble. But I believe the world has changed behind our backs, he said.
Mr Horn gave several international examples, such as Chinas quite move to gain global control over important raw materials such as bauxite, silicon, metal, magnesium and zinc. Its currency has also become internationally recognised; it now has space ambitions; and has become a leader in high-speed trains, internet protocols and clean and green technologies.
He also instanced the growth of Brazil and repeated Craig Barrett of Intel’s observation of burgeoning middle classes in other emerging economies in India, China, central Europe, Latin America, southeast Asia, and South America.
“It seems obvious that the world has changed. It seems clear that restoring our national competitiveness to pre-bubble levels is insufficient,” he said. “We need to create value rather than low cost volume. If we can create high value services and goods for the international markets, then we will create wealth for our economy and also sustainable employment freed from the vagaries of an international race to the bottom,” said Mr Horn.
Mr Horn said that the many multinational companies based here gave Ireland a great foundation. The country has also resource to natural resources such as agri-food; the marine and the underutilised electromagnetic spectrum.
“We are native speakers of the international business language. We have an international diaspora, several times larger than the combined Israeli and Indian diasporas. Our glass is thus half full. How do we fill the rest of it?” he asked.
He said that the means of doing it was to go beyond foreign direct investment and begin to attract foreign risk capital and attract overseas entrepreneurs to Ireland to augment our own. “We can make Ireland the place where all European entrepreneurs are most likely to be successful.”
