A SURVEY OF some of the major multinationals and representative SMEs shows that Ireland has a major skills shortage in the information and communcations technology (ICT).

The survey, carried out by Fastrack to IT (FIT), an initiative led by the technology industry in Ireland that provides those at risk of long-term unemployment with marketable technical skills, estimates that there are in excess of 4,500 immediate job vacancies in the IT sector in Ireland. These are not being filled due to the severely limited supply of suitably skilled applicants, says the report.

The opportunity is there

FIT states that survey “provides a picture of an industry which has the potential to create significant additional employment opportunities”. They believe that many of these vacancies are at the intermediate skills level and people could be upskilled through programmes that would only take between 6 – 24 months to complete.

The skills audit states that there is a “sense of urgency among employers” who want to see that shortages addressed so as to “prevent reallocation of particular technology jobs to other global destinations in order to meet corporate imperatives”.

Areas with particular vacancies are:

1.      Mobile Technologies/Development Platform

2.      Games Development

3.      Web Development/Technologies

4.      Cloud Computing/Virtualisation

5.      Platform Administration

6.      Digital/Creative Media

7.      Networking/PC Maintenance

8.      CRM

9.      Programming Technologies

10.   Project Management

11.   Contact Centre Support

Speaking today at the launch of the survey, the Minister for Training and Skills, Ciarán Cannon said:

We are seeing a worldwide increase in demand for ICT Skills. While we cannot create a supply of highly skilled ICT professionals overnight, through the development and ongoing implementation of the joint Government-Industry ICT Action Plan, Ireland has been to the fore in taking measures to build the pipeline of high level ICT graduates.

Peter Davitt, FIT CEO, said they have been “increasingly concerned at the growing skill shortages in the sector while recognising an increasing and untapped opportunity to create a talent pipeline comprising of those job seekers with transferable skills from declining sectors”.

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