Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me enormous pleasure to be here this afternoon to formally announce the expansion of Trilogy Technologies and to declare their new offices officially open.
Trilogy Technologies is an excellent example of an Irish technology company, delivering for our economy by growing exports, growing jobs and crucially building a solid foundation of innovation and capability in our indigenous technology sector.
I am also delighted to note that this expansion will add a further 30 jobs to Trilogy Technologies’ operation in Ireland. This is an excellent opportunity for the 30 people concerned to build a career in a vibrant, buzzy environment in the technology sector.
Established in 2009, Trilogy has grown strongly, and this growth has been enabled by a talented and experienced management team, and a measured, strategic approach with innovation as the lifeblood of the organisation.
Export growth is vital for the development of Irish industry and Trilogy’s recent acquisition of B2Lateral in London is a crucial step in building revenue and enabling continued growth and employment opportunities. Continued growth and employment opportunities are the central objectives of government policy.
In February, the Government published the 2014 Action Plan for Jobs. This is the third annual instalment in the Government plan aimed at building a sustainable, growing economy, and creating jobs.
Creating new jobs is the top priority for Government. We recognise that too many people around the country have yet to see evidence of recovery. This is why the Government has designated 2014 to be the year for jobs.
Since the Action Plan for Jobs was introduced in 2012, the Government has implemented over 500 actions to support job creation across all Government Departments and a significant number of State agencies. The aim of the Action Plan is to create a supportive operating environment for businesses in order to allow employment to grow across all sectors.
A key strength of the Action Plan process is its cumulative impact – each year’s Plan builds on measures which have been initiated in the previous year. The 2014 Action Plan for Jobs continues and builds on many of the actions contained in the 2012 and 2013 Plans. Successful initiatives are mainstreamed or extended where their performance is positive. State supports are targeted at Ireland best companies and Trilogy is just one further example.
Building on the 2013 Plan, three new Disruptive Reform topics have been targeted in the areas of Entrepreneurship, Winning Overseas and Manufacturing.
We see the ICT sector as being right at the heart of this effort and, as part of our ICT Skills Action Plan, we will provide an additional 1,250 undergraduate ICT places per year in higher education institutions; launch a further round of ICT Skills Conversion courses; and promote careers in ICT to primary and second level students with industry support.
Despite the difficult international and domestic environment, I believe that the policies being pursued by the Government are having a positive impact in supporting enterprise and job creation. We see that today.
In December, we successfully exited the EU/IMF bailout, and two days later we published our Medium-Term Economic Strategy, which sets out our targets of reducing the Government deficit to under 3% of GDP by 2015, and eliminating it entirely by 2018; and secondly, replacing all 330,000 jobs lost during the recession with new jobs by 2020. We plan to achieve this through responsible management of public finances, implementation of our mortgage arrears strategy, addressing access to finance barriers for SME’s, and creating jobs.
Our new Local Enterprise Offices, a key element of the 2014 Action Plan, will be delivered across the country beginning in April, and will be a vital source of information, support and guidance, especially to our SMEs.
We believe that redefining how supports are delivered at local level to new and smaller companies can breathe new life into sectors of the economy that will generate the next wave of job creation. Each LEO will be the local hub for enterprise support, delivering a comprehensive ‘first stop shop’ service to local entrepreneurs and businesses; supporting and building on progress already made.
In addition we will also roll out a cross-Governmental campaign in 2014 to ensure that Irish businesses are aware of the supports for which they are potentially eligible– be it start-up funds, supporting loans or other non-financial supports such as mentoring, assistance pertaining to international fairs and skills training.
And we are seeing signs of progress. The most recent Quarterly data shows that there were 61,000 more people working in Quarter 4 2013 than a year previously. This was the fifth quarter in succession where employment grew year-on-year. We are now creating jobs in the enterprise sector faster than any other economy in the EU or the OECD. We have also seen our international competitiveness rankings improving and our exports growing. Where the economy was shedding 1,600 jobs per week before this Government came into office, 1,200 jobs are now being created on average each week.
The Irish owned tech sector is booming and this is in no small way attributable to companies like Trilogy Technologies.
Trilogy Technologies’ domestic and international success demonstrates the innovation which drives Ireland’s technology sector.
I hope Trilogy will act as a role model to other companies or budding entrepreneurs in the sector. Indeed, with the added benefit of Trilogy’s CEO, Edel Creely, as current chair of the Irish Software Association, this is a realistic ambition.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish Trilogy Technologies and all its staff every success and to assure you of our support as you grow your enterprise and exports as well as create employment.
ENDS.