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IN THREE WEEKS’ time, NASDAQ will become the first major global stock exchange to open or close a market from Dublin when they will be joined by 200 of the CEOs behind the world’s most valuable private technology companies.
It will be a historic moment for our country, with CNN, the BBC, FOX News, CNBC, Bloomberg and many more on hand to broadcast images around the world of the Taoiseach opening the market from Ireland.
Over a half a trillion dollars worth of private technology companies will arrive in Dublin on October 29th from across the globe for the Web Summit. The combined value of these companies exceeds the entire GDP of our country, and many times over. They’ll be joined by hundreds of partners, managing directors and global heads of TMT from the world’s leading investment banks, hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital firms.
All of these people, including the more than 400 international journalists and 8,000 international attendees will be in Dublin to meet the CEOs of these revolutionary technology companies, all of whom, without exception, have been built by software engineers.
So if software engineers are driving a huge wave of innovation the world over, how good a job is Ireland doing educating the next generation of software engineers across our Universities and Institutes of Technology?
Despite lots of recent good news in relation to the technology sector, there are some disconcerting facts about the employment prospects of highly educated Irish graduates employment.
Over the summer I asked the Higher Education Authority of Ireland, of which I am a recently appointed board member, for statistics on unemployment rates in 2013 for those who graduated in 2011 across all degree and diploma courses.
I wanted to see how graduates were faring two years after completing various courses. At the time, I was sure the employment statistics would show incredibly low levels of unemployment for computer science graduates, or what are termed ‘computing graduates’ in official statistics.
What I discovered not only surprised me, it shocked me.
Unemployment rates amongst those who graduated in 2011 in computing courses in Ireland are higher than almost any other degree or diploma course.
Surely the statistics were wrong, I thought. Demand for computing graduates is at an all time high; Ireland, Dublin in particular, has quickly developed a reputation as a high tech hub in Europe; there are thousands of vacancies for “technology workers” at the moment.
The demand exists. So much so that the Government has very publicly committed themselves to increasing the number of places available on computing courses.
But the closer I looked at the statistics the more alarmed I became.
Those who graduated with a graduate diploma in computing in 2011 are almost three times as likely to be unemployed today as every other graduate. There is clearly something very wrong.
The exact statistics are as follows: 7 per cent of people who received graduate diplomas in 2011 are unemployed today, but a full 20 per cent of those who received a Computing Graduate Diploma in 2011 are without jobs.
So why is unemployment so much higher for recent computing graduates compared to those of less practical courses like philosophy and religion, and almost every other course available in our third level institutions for that matter?
There are numerous theories: teaching quality is below market need; student quality is below market need; demand for computing graduates is overstated and more.
With a good knowledge of the sector I don’t know what the best answer is, I just know this is the reality; computing course graduates are more likely to end up unemployed than any other graduate. It’s a reality I think our current Government and our third level institutions should examine more closely, and soon.
With hundreds of the most influential software engineers in the world visiting Ireland at the end of the month, we could be nurturing our own potential world-changers more effectively.
Paddy Cosgrave is the founder of the Web Summit, Europe’s biggest festival of ideas and events. This year the Web Summit will have over 10,000 attendees and features among its invited speakers skateboarder Tony Hawk, Irish rugby captain Jamie Heaslip, Shane Smith, founder of Vice Magazine, Jay Bergman, founder and CEO of Hailo, Jimmy Maymann CEO of the Huffington Post, Aaron Levie founder of Box, Phil Libin CEO of Evernote and Joe Lonsdale founder of Palantir.
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Just get on with it, unionists will use any excuse to avoid the deputy first minister position.
British food safety standards recently signed of on allowing fish and vegetables from close to Fukushima nuclear plant into their food chain. This is the type of stuff that the protocol prevents from entering EU.
Highlights Britians race to standards bottom to promote profits.
There’s a lot less chance of Doug Beattie being needed than the Protocol.
It’s not like they’re a packet of crisps. Dougie trying to keep up with the DUP.
@Jason Healy: too late election over
Does he not realise that any “goods”, as he calls them, that the Ukrainian refugees are carrying are probably their last few possesions from their homeland, where as goods leaving the UK for the EU are goods being sold for profit as as such require to be checked for standards
UKRAINE REFUGEES are arriving here homeless and shell shocked …what is this guy talking about.. unbelievable
Yawn.
Exposing his true colours….Trying to keep one foot in the DUP camp.But at least he is in favour of power sharing.
Ignorance and racism all in one go!
I will be going from GB to Northern Ireland next month for a holiday and am taking my dog with me. Under the NI Protocol my dog will need to have an EU Animal Health Certificate, including an injection against rabies. The last case of rabies in either GB or the island of Ireland was in 1912. Could one of those people who support the Protocol explain to me why the EU insists on this anti-rabies injection in Northern Ireland? Or, to put it another way, is there any reason why the Protocol should not be renegotiated to get rid of obvious nonsense in it?
@Patrick Brompton: Why not email you question onto either Boris Johnston or sir Jeff. It was Boris’s Brexit deal that introduced the protocol supported by the DUP.
It would be the same rules if you went on holidays to France or any other EU country. Britain can’t except special treatment when it left europe. It’s the same for every country that’s not a member of europe.
@Patrick Brompton: — It seems logical to me that there have been no cases of rabies because of dog owners having to comply with necessary regulations, or “nonsense” as you seem to refer to them as.
@leartius: Both Boris and Sir Jeff believe that the NI Protocol should be renegotiated. I would like an answer from someone who does not, explaining why not.
@Patrick Brompton: same rule applies if I take my dog from Éire into the U. K
@E.J. Murray: You are, with respect, making the mistake of thinking that the EU can take credit for the absence of rabies from Ireland. If the last case in either GB or Ireland was in 1912, then the absence of rabies from these islands was nothing to do with the EU before it came into existence. I am not asking for the EU’s requirement for an Animal Health Certificate to be removed for dogs going to Continental Europe. But if a dog is travelling between GB and Northern Ireland, it is a nonsense for the EU to insist on it having an anti-rabies injection. It would still be un-necessary if the dog crosses the border.
@Jim Deck: it’s a nonsense from GB to Ireland and an equal nonsense from Ireland to GB. Let us have a bonfire of unnecessary rules!
@Patrick Brompton: you mean UK to Ireland or Ireland to UK, don’t you? Those are the names of the two nation states in question, Northern Ireland being a part of UK.
And as for your question- tough. You signed an international treaty in 1998 (GFA). Only way to preserve that with brexit is the NI Protocol.
After that, ‘expecting’ any country to make ‘special’ exceptions for the UK is both embarrassing and a clue to UK’s problem: live up to your agreements OR face consequences.
Now bore off.
@Patrick Brompton: — You are, with respect, making the mistake of thinking that I credit the EU with the absence of rabies in Ireland. Even a brick knows that the EU didn’t exist in 1912. I think it nonsense that someone thinks it nonsense for preventing rabies from making a comeback. Perhaps you should think of another excuse for ditching the Protocol that Johnson signed up to?
@Patrick Brompton: my understanding of that particular situation is that any dogs coming from outside the EU into an EU country is required under EU law to get that vacation. Now that GB is no longer in the EU and since the border with the republic is frictionless to honour the terms of the GFA it is a precaution to allow you free movement through the whole Island of Ireland while here. If there was border checks between the republic and the partitioned six counties this wouldn’t be needed, but I’m afraid the terms of the GFA should never be or hopefully will never be over ruled. And for your information the government in Westminster negotiated the terms of both the GFA and the NI protocol. If they made a bags of any of those negotiations then your frustration should be directed at them.
@Patrick Brompton: Because years were spent negotiating Brexit, the stumbling block of NI to a clean break was identified long before the Brexit vote took place and played down by the Pro Brexit campaign the figureheads of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
After the vote it was claimed it could be resolved through technologies that still don’t exist and then through the inclusion of the backstop mechanism proposed by the UK that would activate if the said technologies didn’t appear, the UK then proposed the backstop to become the protocol, because it was deemed to be the workable solution, then they suspended parts of it unilaterally, breaching all previous agreements and now the UK claims renegotiation is the answer, to an agreement that was modified 3 times to their proposed solutions.
@Liam MacSuibhne: This particular rule applies as between GB and Northern Ireland only, not the UK and the Republic.
@Andy mc Laughlin: Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I am no defender of either Johnson or Farrage. I am happy to accept that BoJo made a mess of the NI Protocol. But now that we can see the mess why not amend the Protocol to at least remove totally unnecessary restrictions such as the requirement for an Animal Health Certificate as between GB and Northern Ireland?
@Andy mc Laughlin: My frustration is directed to the EU because it is imposing a rule on the island of Ireland for political reasons which has no basis in reality. I have a vet’s appointment today for a rabies vaccine for the dog which is an unnecessary expense; and another in three weeks’ time to pick up and pay for the Animal Health Certificate. I voted Remain but it is this sort of expensive bureaucracy which makes people in the UK very anti-EU.
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