REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT IDA IRELAND’S GLOBAL CONFERENCE 2011, SHELBOURNE HOTEL, DUBLIN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT IDA IRELAND’S GLOBAL CONFERENCE 2011, SHELBOURNE HOTEL, DUBLIN WEDNESDAY, 5 JANUARY 2011
Dia dhíbh a chairde, thank you for your warm welcome to IDA Ireland’s global conference. My thanks to Barry O’Leary for his kind invitation to join you at the start of a new year and a new decade when our people turn their thoughts to the possibilities and prospects that lie ahead of us. Here in this room are people whose vocation it is to create those possibilities by leading the way through these turgid times to a convincing economic recovery. IDA Ireland has a very particular mission, to attract the best foreign direct investment to Ireland. It has an outstanding record, a record created over past decades by the relentless energy, faith and commitment of the IDA’s 250 staff spread all over the world. Some overseas staff are here today on their first ever visit to Dublin and I offer them and each one of the conference delegates a very warm cead míle fáilte.
I thank you for all you have done to put Ireland on the global industrial and commercial map and for all you are planning to do to keep us there and to develop our potential even further. As President, I have had the chance to see that work being done in so many different countries and cultures, in places where Ireland’s key selling points would never have been known but for your advocacy and persuasiveness. One by one you brought to Ireland a stream of world-class innovative industries. In a world where many countries were vying for foreign investment, you convinced hard headed business investors of the many benefits Ireland had to offer over its competitors.
Today the name IDA Ireland is recognized abroad as a world class agency for securing foreign direct investment and your business and technology parks throughout Ireland are synonymous with high-quality job creation. Ireland’s strong economic growth over the last half century can in many ways be directly linked to the success of your work. The future economic prospects of the country will equally be dictated by the extent to which IDA Ireland succeeds in carrying out its corporate mission.
When the IDA first set up its tent decades ago it faced a massive challenge - nothing less than the creation of a completely new economic beginning for Ireland. It was a dream that many lived to see become real as Ireland grew from a low-tech, high emigration and agricultural nation to a high-tech, high inward migration and urbanised nation. Then, as we know, the upward trajectory of growth faltered under pressure from a global recession and a financially vulnerable national building boom. Today people are more likely to talk of nightmare than dream, as full employment gave way once again to increased unemployment and renewed emigration and Irish people feel the strain of achieving public financial and banking stability. The last couple of years have been very tough for national morale but in the words of poet Brendan Kennelly:
“something that will not acknowledge conclusion insists that we forever begin. “
Your job is always to begin again, and despite and because of the current climate of disenchantment, I know you will begin again in 2011 to promote Ireland to an international audience as the best place to locate a new site or expand an existing plant. The people you talk to will have read the headlines and your role will be to get them to think and plan beyond the negativity of the moment, to impress on their minds an image of an industrious Ireland where people are resilient and ready to “forever begin.” Your job is to introduce them to the Ireland that is not reducible to single headlines, or fatalistic opinion pieces, but rather the complex and exciting Ireland that is cosmopolitan, hard-working, competitively priced, imaginative, innovative, ready to do business, the only English speaking member of the euro-zone, already hugely successful in attracting premium foreign investment, an Ireland whose exports remain very strong despite global and local economic vicissitudes, an Ireland open for business and determined to put this awful period behind us as quickly as possible and to keep its learnt lessons in front of us.
The work of IDA Ireland is pivotal to how Ireland is to be positioned and perceived on the world stage and you have already set an encouraging scene with the publication last year of your ten year strategy ‘Horizon 2020.’ You have set impressive and bold targets – 105,000 new jobs and 640 investments by 2014, half of them in regional locations. A lot of households are depending on the strong track record of IDA Ireland coming through for them. The confidence and trust that rests on your shoulders is nothing short of immense but, as your strategy makes clear, if the targets are to be met, and they can be, there must be a national collaborative effort, with all stakeholders doing their bit and doing their best to pull Ireland out of recession and into recovery.
Horizon 2020 speaks of ‘Team Ireland’ working together coherently and purposefully - that is to say Government, our diplomatic service, business leaders, academic leaders, and everyone else whose job it is to promote Ireland abroad. Beyond those whose job it is to promote Ireland abroad are the many, many more who work very hard to create and sustain it. I think particularly of the global Irish family, including our missionaries, development aid workers and emigrants whose fidelity to Ireland is simply outstanding and has made friends for Ireland across the globe. Everything they do strengthens Ireland’s hand and name. The recently-formed Global Irish Network is on course to prove itself to be a very important new resource, and the Government’s overarching strategy “Trading and Investing in a Smart Economy” which IDA had a hand in, also provides a very useful framework for collaboration.
One of the secrets of IDA Ireland’s success has always been your ability to see beyond immediate difficulties and to identify future evolutions in Foreign Direct Investment. By identifying and focusing on the next wave of innovation, you consistently place Ireland in the best position to take full advantage of new trends and ideas and we have already seen the end result of that farsightedness with Ireland becoming such an attractive investment location for companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and leading online games companies thanks to the significant part played by the IDA.
To those looking for the green shoots of new beginnings, it is worth looking at the amazing investments secured in 2010 alone by the IDA. They represent a “who’s who” of leading names in financial services, the medical-pharmaceutical industry and the ICT sector. These companies have invested in Ireland over the last 12 months as a direct result of the work carried out by you. In fact, it was striking that amid the preoccupation in December with the EU/IMF deal, the four year plan and the Budget, a succession of IDA job announcements at that time passed by with comparatively modest national media notice, but a lot of hope was raised in hearts which want jobs, want the chance to be economically active again and which are very glad that you are doing what you are doing no matter what the headlines are consumed by.
The impact your work has on the daily lives of families and communities throughout Ireland is the real bottom line. Helping Ireland to get back on its feet after a few difficult years, securing its future for the coming generations is the fuel that drives you. Your success in the traditional markets in North America and Europe is legendary and now your reach has extended to Brazil, Singapore, Russia and expanding further into India and China - all the time positioning Ireland for the flow of investment from these promising growth markets, both old and new.
When Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed his full commercial plane on the Hudson River after a disastrous engine failure he was asked by a journalist if he had prayed in those thirty seconds or so when he had to process a lot of really bad news and bad advice. He said no, he was too busy landing the plane but he hoped the people down the back were doing the praying. It was Woody Allen who said 80% of success was about turning up. We need people who turn up no matter what, who are not fazed by the storm of the moment but whose experience and wisdom allows them to steer carefully and intelligently through the worst of the weather.
IDA Ireland’s history is of an organisation, a team that has always turned up no matter how difficult the context, no matter how challenging the circumstances. More than that, IDA Ireland has always delivered for Ireland and that is because the IDA team profoundly understands Ireland’s strengths and has an enduring faith in Ireland’s people and their potential. I have been fortunate to see many of you at work and every time I have, I come away so proud that Ireland fields a team of such able ambassadors, which is the envy of other countries around the world.
I hope today’s conference will be a very fruitful opportunity for each one of you to share the insights, experience and ideas which will inform best practice and fresh directions in the months and years ahead. Importantly, I hope it will refuel each one of you as you face into another decade in this relentless economic missionary work for Ireland. May 2011 reward the work of the IDA. May its clients continue to prosper and do well here and may many more join them bringing jobs, economic reinvigoration and the joy of hope to our country.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.