Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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Question 373: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of vacant jobs in the ICT sector here at present; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20513/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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A report produced in January by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (EGFSN) entitled Addressing High-Level ICT Skills Recruitment Needs confirms that Ireland is a successful major centre for ICT operations with around 75,000 people employed in 8,000 companies. Indeed, ten of the top ICT companies in the world having substantial operations in Ireland.

The research undertaken by the Group, the Secretariat to which is provided by Forfás, indicates that the global ICT market is expected to grow by 5% between 2009 and 2014/15 with potential growth rate as high as 20% per annum over the next decade. In order to exploit these opportunities, however, it is crucial to ensure that Ireland's labour force is appropriately skilled. In this context the Group's report found that there are a range of skills and recruitment difficulties within the ICT sector with the result that, as at December 2011, there were approximately 1,800 vacancies in the sector. These vacancies arose mainly due to the lack of graduates with high-level ICT Honours Degrees and above which are required to fill such positions as Computer Software Engineers, ICT Network Specialists and Engineers, ICT Security Experts, ICT Telecommunications, ICT Project Managers and IT Sales and Marketing / Foreign Languages Skills Personnel. The report points out that this challenge is not unique to Ireland as such high level ICT skills are also in short supply globally.

In order to address these challenges I, along with my colleague, Mr Ruairí Quinn, T.D., Minister for Education and Skills, subsequently launched the ICT Action Plan: Meeting the High Level ICT Skills Needs of Enterprise in Ireland. The Action Plan establishes an overreaching target of doubling the annual output from honours degree ICT undergraduate programmes to 2,000 graduates by 2018 and outlines a number of actions that will be implemented to ensure an increased output of appropriately skilled graduates in the medium term 2015-2018.

The Government's Action Plan for Jobs highlights the need to align skills with enterprise needs and outlines a number of actions in this regard, including our intention to implement the ICT Action Plan. Progress made in implementing these actions will be monitored on a quarterly basis. Last week's progress report on the Jobs Strategy confirms that Action 1.35, which calls for an immediate response to the challenges in the ICT sector, has been implemented in quarter 1 by:

· maximising the uptake on programmes such as Springboard; and,

· establishing a high level ICT foresight Group to ensure that the higher education programmes in ICT are aligned to changing needs. This Group met in January and will reconvene in June 2012 to further consider the findings of the ICT Action Plan.