The joint imitative by the Department of Education and the Department of Enterprise and Employment to close the skills gap in the computer sector is overdue. In recent years both the IDA and voices from within the computer industry have pointed to the potential seriousness of the problem. The new programme will provide at least 2,000 extra course places for students in computers, languages and technical skills.
In a welcome new departure, both public and private sector institutions are being asked to tender for contracts to train 1,000 computer software graduates and 750 computer technicians a year. In order to service the booming teleservices sector, there will also be a greater emphasis on foreign language skills with 1,000 additional course places at third level and a further 1,000 language placements abroad.
All this is an impressive response to a problem which - if not properly addressed - has the potential to undermine this State's impressive record of industrial growth. The IDA Chief Executive, Mr Kieran McGowan, was surely correct to identify Ireland's skilled core of young educated workers as the lynchpin of this economic growth yesterday. The IDA has done its job in helping to attract a record level of inward investment the Government's task is to ensure that human resources, much trumpeted by the authority, are actually available to these foreign companies when they locate here.
It can legitimately be asked why the skills shortage was not foreseen. Certainly the IDA's prescience in targeting the computer sector for inward investment a decade ago has not been accompanied by much in the way of strategic thinking from government. The lamentable failure of successive governments to give science and technology the priority they so clearly merit - in education, in training and in spending - is already well chronicled. But the failure to provide foreign language skills to service foreign industry is an even more basic failure of public policy.
In mitigation, it should be acknowledged that the level of economic development in this State has taken everyone by surprise. Last year was a record one for job creation; the current year may be even better. The projections mentioned by the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Bruton, yesterday are astonishing: some 20,000 additional jobs from existing and future foreign investment, about 6,000 new jobs from the indigenous computer industry and 4,000 extra jobs in the teleservices sector.
Yesterday's action plan should help to fill the skills void but it must only be seen as a first step. Educational and training priorities must be adjusted in response to technological change. Most of all, there is a need to move away from platitudes about the Information Age and to build what President Clinton has called a "bridge to the 21st century". Providing proper computer and foreign language facilities in every primary and post-primary school in the State would be a practical and sensible first step.