Address by Mr. Noel Treacy T.D., Minister for Science, Technology and Commerce at the Official Opening of the International Conference on Software Engineering at University of Limerick on 7th June, 2000, at 9.00 a.m.

I am delighted to be able to join you all at the opening of this International Conference which is a most prestigious event dedicated to the advancement of software engineering. At the outset I want to give a very warm welcome to all of the overseas visitors and especially to those who are here for the very first time - you are indeed most welcome to our country.

In many ways, it is appropriate that this Conference, which is discussing this most modern of technologies, should be held here in Limerick. This area, with its historical aviation links in nearby Foynes and Shannon, played a pioneering role in what were the very modern technologies of over half a century ago. The Foynes Flying Boat base, and subsequently Shannon International Airport, served as refuelling points for 85% of all transatlantic flights during the 1940’s and 1950’s, and so made a very substantial contribution to the development of early aviation links between the new and old worlds of both America and Europe.

And just as our early involvement in international aviation gave Ireland a recognition in that industry which was greatly disproportionate to our size, it could be said that the success which the modern Ireland has achieved in software, is similarly out of all proportion to a small country of our size.

You come together here at a very exciting time for the software sector in Ireland. It has proved to be one of the cornerstones of Ireland’s current economic good health.

About 24,000 people are now employed in the industry here. Combined annual revenues are in excess of £5.2 billion (euro6.6 billion). Many world leaders in software have established bases here in Ireland.

It is a measure of the success of the booming software industry that some Irish companies are beginning to out-source software development to countries such as India. Few could have imagined such a possibility thirty years ago, when the first tentative steps were being taken by our Industrial Development Authority to promote the software industry. Yet today, software is one of Ireland's biggest success stories.

The software industry here had good reason to celebrate recently when a new report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) established that Ireland has now overtaken the USA to become the leading exporter of software products in the world. It is interesting that, between them, Ireland and the US now account for 65% of world trade in software.

The OECD report paid tribute to the development of the software industry here, noting that the Irish software sector is often cited as an example of the success of national policies aimed at developing a world class high-tech industry.

This report has concluded that this success stemmed from a combination of government policies aimed at attracting investment, the existence of a skilled young and relatively inexpensive labour force and a widespread infrastructure aimed at supporting the computer software industry in this country.

So, what are the Government policies which have proved so successful in this area?

Since the 1970’s, Ireland has targeted industries with a high knowledge content as the way to develop our national economy. We recognised that a multi-faceted approach was required to address this issue, and so, Government policy has consisted of a combination of elements, designed to facilitate the expansion of a number of sectors including the software industry. As well as providing supports for industry and enterprise generally, we have put structures in place in relation to education and telecommunications, over the years.

We have in place various supports such as a 10% corporation tax rate, coupled with a variety of financial incentive support schemes such as employment grants, equity investments, marketing assistance to sell abroad, and so on.

Side-by-side with these incentives, one of the key location attractions which Ireland has presented in the past has been the ready availability of an educated work-force with the requisite skills. Our educational system was deliberately structured to support our decision to pursue a knowledge-based industrial development policy. As a result, Ireland has been turning out excellent graduates, especially in computing, and this has been a major factor in our software success story.

While our unprecedented economic growth over the past decade has inevitably had an impact in this area, our Government have taken a number of initiatives designed to ensure the continued availability of people with the necessary skills, such as more than doubling the number of places for software in third level education, and an Accelerated Technician Programme for manufacturing and software support.

We have also set up a Technology Foresight fund of £560m for research – software is one of the two areas targeted. Investments by this Fund in World Class research and development activity will considerably ramp up our capability to produce global scale innovations. The key challenge for us is to work to ensure that the commercial transfer of the research results is maximised here in Ireland.

There are many other elements which go to make up our approach to developing our software sector, and I do not propose to go into them all in detail here. But, with the attractions which Ireland had to offer, clearly many of the world's top software companies decided that this was a good place to do business, and have set up operations bases here as a springboard to sell into the rest of Europe, and beyond.

But even that doesn't tell the full story. A large supply sector has developed to support the software industry and it is estimated that for every job in software there are one to two more in support services such as translation, fulfilment, packaging, manual printing, transport and technical support, none of which would exist without the software firms around the country.

My own view would be that if we had never had the multinationals here, this would have happened anyway. Maybe not to the same extent. There may have been an ‘inspiration factor’ at work, because the multinationals put Ireland on the map for software. But I think it is the quality of the people who have taken up computing, and the quality of the courses they have been put through, that has spawned the Irish software success.

I note that the Conference timetable has a wide variety of internationally-known keynote speakers, specialised workshops, a tutorial programme as well as technical exhibits. I have no doubt that you will have an interesting and rewarding week ahead.

I wish this Conference and all of its participants every success this week and in the exciting millennium ahead.