Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Action Plan for Job Creation and Innovation: Startup Ireland

3:20 pm

Mr. Gene Murphy:

It is worth mentioning that we are launching a venture called Start Local, in which we are providing free office space for six months to start-ups in a particular area. The idea is that the payback is the bounce we get in our community within our office. The guys will chat more and learn from that. It is a meeting of cultures, which I saw recently in the downtown area of Las Vegas, where a guy called Tony Hsieh has put $50 million into a fund to build up office space and support start-ups. He has bought old casinos, wiped out the casinos and made co-working spaces. There are some really interesting quick things that one can do. Deputies Lyons and Collins mentioned NAMA. It makes more sense for NAMA to unlock the city centre locations first, as they will bring more people, who will spend more money, which will create more jobs. It would be interesting to see what could be done in that field.