SEABROOK LAUNCHES IT'S FIRST OPEN DAY IN GALWAY ON OCTOBER 7TH.

Sean O’Sullivan cites shortage of IT staff as a barrier to Ireland’s recovery

Speaking at the recent Cork Chamber of Commerce event entitled Business And Investment Opportunities in India, Sean O’Sullivan, CEO of Seabrook Technology Group, spoke of his grave concern at the decreasing availability of IT resources in Ireland and the impact that this will have on Ireland’s recovery from the current recession.

The IDA and Enterprise Ireland have been very successful in generating new jobs in the IT sector. In 2011 The Irish IT market is already seeing investment from foreign investors such as Murex, Intel, Quest Software, Valeo, Allergan, Fidelity and Google. There is recognition within the global IT Industry that the Irish market is a wealthy source of skilled labour and an educated workforce. But what these facts and figures also highlight is that along with the quality of our IT graduates there also needs to be more emphasis on the quantity of graduates coming through the system.

Companies like IBM, EMC, SAP etc are also planning to hire graduates and experienced staff.

Despite significant promotion by State bodies and private industry, over a five year period from 2001 to 2006 the numbers of IT entrants into Ireland’s premier Universities dropped almost 50% from 1242 to 653.

“The Class of 2006 are the graduates of 2010 and the limited numbers of graduates are not satisfying the demand in the Irish IT industry” according to Sean.

In addition, many recent graduates are voluntarily emigrating to Canada, USA and Australia to seek experience in those markets

This experience mirrors the IT recruitment situation in Ireland in 1998. At that time, preparations for Y2K and the expansion of corporate systems using SAP, JDEdwards, Oracle, QAD etc created a need for resources that could not be fully satisfied.

To overcome that difficulty, Seabrook opened an office in Mumbai in 1998, India and is currently recruiting Indian developers and consultants in that country.

Sean O’Sullivan has over 30 years experience of the IT industry and looks to foreign markets for business expansion. Seabrook specializes in technology and software solutions and has already seen business growth in 2011 in Europe and United States with a very productive first quarter.

Sean states “In the first quarter of 2011 Seabrook is already engaging new projects, new partnerships and new opportunities which yields a requirement for staff expansion. We are currently looking at to fill 5 new positions but are finding it difficult to find Irish staff to match the roles”.