Ten towns to create 8,500 hi-tech jobs
Tuesday May 30 2000
THE Government yesterday unveiled an ambitious £230m plan to develop ten incubator units in towns across the country to grow technology firms and create 8,500 jobs over seven years.
The new ``webworks'' will be located in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Dundalk, Carlow, Athlone, Letterkenny, Castlebar, Sligo and Waterford.
The state's development arm Enterprise Ireland has pinpointed digital media, electronic business, health sciences, software and telecommunications as areas of growth.
The new companies will specialise in these sectors in an attempt to grow Ireland's internationally traded services from £1.1bn last year to £3.9bn in 2007.
Enterprise Ireland director Peter Coyle said companies in these sectors would naturally develop in Dublin but the state organisation was trying to steer them away from the capital where they would create ``problems like congestion.''
The three centres in Galway, Cork and Limerick will be 40,000 square feet in size each and cost between £10m and £15m to develop.
The seven smaller operation in regional towns are expected to be 10,000 square feet.
The buildings are expected to be financed and constructed by property development companies which would benefit from rental income.
The companies themselves will receive venture capital support, financial backing from Enterprise Ireland (which would buy shares in the firms) and investment from the people who start the companies.
Mr Coyle said that Enterprise Ireland hoped to get the ``sod turned'' on each of the centres this year.
He added that Silicon Valley in California was successful because there had been intense activity in a small area and people involved in companies frequently hopped from one job to provide cross fertilisation among companies.
Enterprise Ireland's project will also aim to have a critical mass of companies to have a clustering effect, he said.
Included in the plan announced yesterday also is an electronic business learning centre which will teach companies about trading over the internet and will be located in the West of Ireland.
Mr Coyle said he hoped most of the state agency's clients will attend the centre.
It will be operating for two years and will then close down.
- By DAVID MURPHY
