Was it hard attracting people from traditional modes of employment to the computer and information technology industries?
The Republic traditionally wasn’t an industrial nation and even by the late Seventies 38% of the workforce was engaged in agriculture. Today, that figure is down to 9%. Every year the best of our young people went abroad and contributed their skills to building up other economies. Eventually we knew we’d need them at home, which we now do. What do you imagine is the biggest milestone in your career? I saw the huge effect of digitalization as well as the opportunities it opened up to the Irish economy in finance and industry. We looked around the world for investments to draw in. Some of the early investments involved transferring the service industry, as in the areas of health and health insurance. Companies would send over claims from the United States to Ireland on the night flight, which would then be prepared by our young people and the results sent back through high-speed data lines to the States within 24-36 hours. It created a huge cut in costs for the Americans which made it ve
