Complacency threatens State's e-economy

As we nervously watch the US economy for signs of further instability, we are at enormous risk of ignoring a much greater and more insidious threat to continued economic growth and development in this State: complacency.

Viewed from the technology sector angle, complacency is the misguided belief that we've arrived, or very nearly, at the destination for which we set out. We have low unemployment, good salaries, the bulk of the major tech multinationals located here and an international reputation as a top location. We are spinning off our own companies to compete in the global arena, we have fibre-optic connections to Europe and the US, and all we've to do now is sit back and reap what we have sown.

Wrong. While the transformation of the Irish economic landscape has been nothing short of miraculous over the past 15 years - and much of that shift is due to Ireland Inc's love affair with the international technology industry - the real challenges have only just begun.

The tech industry is more complex, the needs of business more sophisticated, the profit margins leaner and labour cheaper elsewhere. Industries and companies that have done well here in the past will move, fade or crumble. Costly infrastructure needs to be constantly built out and improved.

We need to be looking forward to what can make the Republic a technology innovator. What we need is not a grinning builder of technology industrial estates and call centres for the world's companies but a creative competitor and inventor, and a breeding ground for new companies.

Complacency means the industrial estate planners are seen as the innovators, and fresh, challenging, needfully risk-taking ventures are seen as indulgences, rather than badly needed incubators of promise and longer-term prosperity.

Nothing highlights this concern so completely as the plight of the Government's important digital district project for the Liberties area. The scheme - the only large-scale economic project of real, comprehensive vision in a decade - is turning into the digital limbo district. The district's development committee has chosen to maintain such an alarmingly low profile for the project that it is practically subterranean. And some might argue that the district is indeed sunk, now that it has had its funding slashed in half by the Department of Finance.

Of course, given that the Government had yet to fix any real budget for the project and given that no one has yet articulated any concrete vision of what the project is supposed to be, we are left guessing about what actual sum will emerge and what effect this "cutback" might have. But a figure of £100 million (€127 million) had been bandied about and, therefore, we can accept that the non-existent budget of a virtual £100 million has been trimmed to a virtual £50 million.

As the cost of Sports Stadium Ireland spirals (critics say it could reach £1 billion) and the Government luxuriates in a £6 billion budget surplus - and argues that the surplus more than justifies the spend on the sports stadium - the amount allocated towards the digital district is absurd and unmindful of real priorities. What a paltry sum, even when considered simply in terms of a large-scale urban renewal project for the much neglected Liberties, much less a cultural and economic centrepiece.

But set aside the funding issue - after all, virtual funding may be increased down the line anyway - and consider why this project seems to have veered off the road.

First, the project has had no minister driving it. Initially under the Taoiseach's aegis, the district needed a sympathetic and vigorous championing that it could hardly get, given Mr Ahern's other concerns. The district was placed under the immediate stewardship of the capable Mr Paddy Teahon but, unfortunately, so was the Bertie Bowl - and we all know what project has received front-page headlines and endless Dail debates for months on end. Given the controversy surrounding the stadium since its inception three years ago, one wonders why this second project was added to Mr Teahon's overly full plate.

Then, one wonders was it wise for Magahy and Co, the management company behind Temple Bar, to be awarded the contract not just for the Bertie Bowl but for the digital district as well. The firm may have made the best pitch for both jobs but how in the world is one small consultancy company to manage two such massive projects? Surely a second company should have been chosen for one of the ventures.

Evidence is that energies so far have been steered towards the stadium, not the district. We have an artist's rendering of the stadium, architects, consortia bidding for the project and details of its features - yet no one has seen a single image of the district.

We do not know its physical spread, what cultural centres it might contain, or how business and research might be lured. The website for the district, www.thedigitalhub.com, contains only the contents of the hastily produced print brochure from last December (and one despairs of a digital hub that can only produce a bland, brochureware website). Yet the district's energetic development is far more important to the economy and national visibility than a stadium.

Responsibility for "explaining" the district seems to have defaulted to MIT's MediaLabEurope (MLE), described repeatedly as the district's "anchor tenant".

This role for MLE was written into the agreement by which it came here. But the lab is an educational and research institution, not an environmental planning consultancy, and understandably has been unable to define a national economic and cultural project whose concept and purpose always lay with the Government.

A development plan is due to be published any day but, strangely, this crucial "anchor tenant" has only now been invited to contribute ideas for how the district might take shape. And the fact remains that much scepticism and doubt has developed precisely because the planning process has remained obscured from many of those in academia, business and the arts who would be expected to form a key part of the digital district community.

The district is under serious threat of becoming a non-runner, rather than the digital powerhouse, community revitaliser and jobs' creator it should be.

A positive sign is that the project has been given a home in the Department of Public Enterprise, placed with civil servants that understand its potential and a minister who has demonstrated an ability to make things happen fast on the technology front (although one worries about its relocation to such an overburdened department, itself beset with raging battles on other fronts).

Real energy is needed to rescue this critical project from the doldrums. Adequate funding is also needed and, one hopes, will be allocated once some vision is restored and complacency kicked out of the way.

klillington@irish-times.ie