I thank the Chairman for inviting us to attend the committee today. It is great to see we acknowledge there is a skills shortage, something which was debated earlier. This is a significant issue in our sector where there are currently 2,500 jobs lying vacant because we cannot find people to fill them.
I wish to refer specifically to a comment that was made in the last session by the university representatives. They said that Irish graduates were extremely employable internationally, which is a fact. They are extremely employable by all other countries seeking to have a smart economy. They are proactively incentivising Irish graduates to work overseas. A number of our members have lost staff who went to work in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. All of these employers are pursuing their own strategies to attract digitally skilled staff.
I want to take a practical approach to today's meeting by providing the committee with a set of proposals and recommendations. Earlier this year, the Irish Internet Association, IIA, launched its own policy proposal on retaining skilled workers in Ireland. The IIA proposes a short to medium-term strategy specifically targeting employees to stay here. We want people who have gone through the education system in Ireland to be incentivised to take up the 2,500 jobs, if not more, in the sector. This would be done through the development and implementation of a tax credit programme for them to incentivise them to invest their futures here.
In addition, we would like to consider the possibility of a repatriating and relocation grant specifically targeting this important indigenous Irish industry. At the moment, international organisations in the sector here can pay to relocate international workers to take up such positions. Indigenous businesses do not have the same opportunity, so we propose a relocation grant to help in the short term Irish SMEs, which could not ordinarily afford to do so, to source people overseas to take up these positions here.
The second issue is that of attracting students to take up study in this area. I was particularly impressed by one of the previous witnesses who said we need to promote careers, not jobs. We are conscious of that too and for that reason we are proposing a qualifications and accreditation programme for developers. The developer community currently includes everyone from self-taught teenagers to experienced postgraduate students. In other professions and trades there is a minimum requirement for either a primary degree or a postgraduate qualification that would afford them some professional status. That does not exist for the developer community at the moment, but we think the benefits of having such a system would be manyfold. It would ensure that in the recruitment of an employee or the engagement of a company's services, the employer-customer is able to make a reasonable, objective and timely evaluation of that candidate's skills.
With such a system, standards in the industry would rise as rogue traders leave the market or, at the very least, would be forced to reach minimum standards of professionalism to compete for jobs. Currently, many people who have gone through a 13-week course, and have done a few hours on Ruby and Java, can legitimately say they are web developers when in fact they are not. That is the reason I have grown men ringing me in tears because they have just paid €9,000 for a poor standard e-commerce site. They have not received what they were supposed to get. Traders like that exist, but professionalising the sector would eliminate it. It would provide greater clarity, as well as a structured education and career path for those investing their futures in this field.
The previous speaker alluded to the importance of promoting careers. We want people to take up jobs in our sector but we need to minimise the risk for them. We do not want to go through an experience that we went through in 2000 where, as was claimed earlier, students were frightened off studying these subjects. In fact, students were not frightened but their parents and career guidance teachers were. They were influencing 15 year olds when they were choosing what to study in the leaving certificate. Much of the time, those students look to their parents and teachers for that level of guidance.
There is an old adage in our sector - I hope my colleague from Microsoft will excuse me for saying it - which is that no one ever got fired for buying IBM. No parents ever got disowned by their children for recommending that they become an accountant, solicitor or engineer. No career guidance teacher took that kind of risk either. We want to eliminate or remove some of the risk in studying these subjects and taking up careers in this field.
The proposed system would also promote assurances of standards for businesses investing in Ireland. For example, if a multinational organisation was planning to establish a business in Ireland, we would be unique in recognising the developer community as a profession with recognised standards. Following what the previous session discussed concerning continuing life-long learning, it would include an element of continuous professional development. This would ensure that graduates in this subject matter would be compelled to comply with a number of continual professional development hours throughout the year.
I have already mentioned the importance of career guidance for second and third level students. Despite a movement in this year's CAO applications towards science and technology, we believe that there is still room for improved career guidance support for students from parents and teachers in raising awareness of how these subjects can not only lead to a secure, but also a fruitful career. Many students are not aware of this. Additionally, graduates of arts and business degrees do not fully explore the opportunities of postgraduate specialisms in these fields. Teachers and parents are more likely to influence students towards traditional professions until we can eliminate some of the insecurity around what the future holds.
We have just heard an extensive review of third level education. As regards our sector at this time, at best, most third level syllabi are reflective of the previous 12 to 24-month historic needs of industry. However, by the time students graduate from a technology course in this country, it is entirely possible that their studies are in fact three to four years out of date.
Ballyfermot, which was alluded to earlier, has produced outstanding, world-class graduates who have gone on to perform internationally, as well as winning Oscar nominations for their animation work. Animation currently employs 800 people in Ireland but it could easily employ double that figure. I recently attended the launch of an animation business where three CEOs were arguing over who would be first to ring a person who was available in the market. They were fighting over that one person. I know of one animator who is seeking 25 new people but he cannot find them anywhere. Ballyfermot used to deliver the graduates required by this sector but it is now slipping backwards.
We propose more frequent and consistent industry consultation based on future thinking for syllabus development. We need to ensure that all our graduates are equipped with the skills needed for a modern economy. This includes technical and engineering, as well as business and arts programmes. It is our experience that relatively recent graduates of marketing and business, for example, are undertaking further postgraduate studies. The Irish Internet Association runs its own diploma in digital marketing. It is alarming to see the number of newly graduated marketing students who are now undertaking diplomas in digital marketing. This is because the digital element of their studies was, quite clearly, not reflected in the universities or colleges they had attended.
Students in corporate finance and accounting need to reflect that business models have changed and are now based more on internationally-traded services and cloud businesses. We also need to provide a stronger emphasis on entrepreneurship for technology students. We need our best and brightest developers equipped with the requisite degree of commercial acumen to make the transition from being a "techie" to being a technological entrepreneur and business founder.
Current secondary school computer rooms are equipped to teach students the European Computer Driving Licence or ECDL, but this module is almost 20 years old. We are teaching 14 year olds how to use PowerPoint and Excel, which is the equivalent of teaching them how to use a mobile phone. They have been doing it since they were six. We need to teach them not how to use, but how to develop the applications because that is where the opportunities lie.
Computer rooms should be language labs but as well as teaching French , German and Spanish in schools, we need to be teaching the international languages of Java, PHP and Ruby. In that way, students would have international computer languages thus allowing them to compete for jobs internationally. In addition, it would allow Ireland to compete for such jobs to be located here. Once one has grasped a foreign language, it is relatively easy to learn others and this applies equally to programming and coding. Currently, we do not have teachers who are qualified to teach computer studies, which is frustrating for teachers and students alike. I was recently talking to a secondary school teacher qualified to teach mathematics and geography. She was asked this year to go into the school to teach computers. She said she knows how to use a computer but not how to teach computers. We devalue the teaching profession by asking people to teach subjects they do not know how to teach. We need to equip them to do this. At present, that service is being provided by a 19-year-old boy from Cork. I do not know if the members are aware of James Whelton; he won our "Best Rookie" award last Friday night. James, at the age of 18, set up computer clubs for students between the ages of 12 and 18 to learn programming languages. He is currently filling the gap that should be addressed by the education sector. The IIA is wholly committed to recognising the needs of all of our members from global technology corporations, such as Microsoft, to individual developers, start-ups - this is why Mr. Iain Mac Donald of SkillPages is present - and SME consumers of technology. We want to make sure that our industry, our shared economy, has the necessary human capital to ensure sustainable growth, and we believe that the skills shortage needs to be addressed immediately by a coalition of those associated with education, industry and good governance.
