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The report, completed by the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS), said that there would be high demand in Ireland for IT professionals over the next three years, "even in the event of a severe slowdown."
But despite the concern for filling the posts, the Irish Computer Society (ICS), which is a leading member of CEPIS and backed the survey, hailed the report as good news overall. "Yes there is downturn, but it's not going to affect what is fundamentally a growing industry," Frank Cronin, chief executive officer Irish Computer Society, told ElectricNews.Net.
Cronin said that in order to address the apparent lack of interest in computer courses by students, he expected the Irish government and the nation's universities to implement a number of changes in how students are encouraged to study IT. Among these will a slight change in the courses themselves to make them seem more "fun." Also, universities, councillors and the government will make it clear to students that there is a huge demand for IT workers, and as such, these employees can expect relatively high levels of pay.
Cronin also noted that even if there were not enough Irish students to fill all of the posts, professionals from places like Romania, Russia, Hungary and other Eastern European nations are available to cover the gaps.
Other notable statistics in the report, which covered Ireland, Germany, Sweden and the UK and can be found on the CEPIS Web site, say that Ireland has the highest representation of female computing professionals, with nearly twice the proportion as that found in the UK and Germany. Ireland also has the youngest profile of IT professionals of the represented countries.
The UK and Sweden however scored higher in terms of self-employment of IT professionals, although the Republic did top the table for the percentage of computer professionals within the supply sector versus services sector.
Notably, the CEPIS survey used a new approach in making its forecasts, calculating IT employment demand based on four different per-year growth rates, 2 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent. With Ireland's most recent annual growth rate at 11.3 percent, a figure of 10 percent was chosen to determine the demand for new IT jobs in 2005.
Based on this 10 percent figure, the report said Ireland can expect to see an annual average IT job growth of 2,790 in 2002 to 2003, 6,382 in 2003 to 2004 and 4,342 in 2004 to 2005.
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