New fund to alleviate skills shortages

The establishment of a financial education fund by the Government could take the edge off the current skills crisis and even lead to thousands of new jobs in the financial services sector.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has unveiled plans to create an "IFSC skills fund" to address current and projected skills shortages in the financial sector, the Irish Times reported last week. The fund will be used to provide specialist financial education programmes to those working in the industry.

Mr Ahern also announced that a dedicated centre for financial services skills will be set up to provide "very specific assistance", and enable high-level training and research to take place in the sector. "I believe that this measure will ensure a supply of very highly qualified students, to PhD level, from Irish educational institutions," he said. "It will also create a research basis that may be capable of commercialisation by the industry itself."

The Irish Bankers' Federation welcomed the announcement, saying "the [Irish] international financial services sector has the potential to grow direct employment from the current 19,000 to 30,000 over the next five years."

Frank O'Dwyer, chief executive of the Irish Association of Investment Managers, tells eFinancialCareers.com that in order to turn Ireland into a significant centre for active management of global assets, the necessary skills sets must first be developed here. Successfully tapping into this huge market would in turn create a substantial number of new jobs. "To compete in that market we would need a lot of front office specialists - bond, derivative and equity specialists," Mr O'Dwyer explains.