GUEST COMMENT: EU intervention will spur a renewed appetite to hire within international companies in Ireland
As the world casts an acerbic eye on Ireland's banking crisis this week, and the IMF and EU officials parachute into town to strike an imminent deal for a bailout, it looks like the tide of uncertainty will force the finance minister's hand.
While much of the focus has understandably focused on the impact on the domestic banking sector, the fact that our European partners are tabling a bailout should calm the nerves of the large multinational businesses based here.
Inward investment here relies on several Irish benefits; an educated workforce, low operational costs, including labour and utilities, and government incentives. The biggest of these is the 12.5% corporation tax rate, which hopefully should survive the bailout despite pressures from European leaders to impose a rise as part of the conditions of the deal.
Overriding these environmental comforts for securing inward investment is the stability and faith in the economic climate. The EU/IMF intervention should provide reassurance in the this regard, which could encourage renewed levels of inward investment.
Paradoxically, we've has witnessed some strong signals of financial health from the Irish market in recent months. Notably a there's been a significant increase in multinational corporation and blue chip recruitment across all finance levels in 2010. The Irish accountancy and finance recruitment business has grown net fee income by 104% over the last year.
This increase has been driven mainly by shared service centre operations based in Ireland, as well as financial services. We have seen some strong growth signs within the financial services sector in Ireland recently, with a jump from just over 3%, to over 9% in export activity from the second to the third quarter.
Basel III and Solvency II will certainly become key areas that will see considerable growth from an employment perspective over the coming 12-18 months as well as the further focus on financial and client reporting, risk (operational, credit and market) and compliance.
The funds industry continues to attract new investment on an almost weekly basis and the life and reinsurance markets are seeing premiums continually growing.
As the Irish financial services sector is dominated by global companies, the actual effect of domestic issues will have less impact on performance and thus job creation within these sectors. In this way the economy is something of a dual economy - Dublin and Ireland, rather like London is in some ways divorced from the rest of the UK economy.
However, as political and sovereign stability increases we will see further and new inward investment to Ireland due in no small part to our European partners.
We see a considerable upside to recent developments, none more so than the opportunity to reorganise the domestic banking system. As the global recovery continues to gather pace, Ireland as an open market will continue to benefit and we see this having a positive effect on domestic demand for qualified accounting professionals.
In summary, we believe the financial services landscape is changing for the better. As transparency becomes key and stability increases, Ireland's attractiveness will improve over the medium and long term. As the broader market realises that Ireland Inc is open for business, the exposure generated globally in recent months may well work in our favour.
Dan McKeown is regional manager, Ireland at financial services recruiter Marks Sattin
