STUDENT ENTERPRISE COMPETITION:If you employ yourself, that's a success - it's even better if you employ others as well

DIGICEL FOUNDER Denis O'Brien has highlighted the need to become less reliant on foreign direct investment and to foster a greater enterprise culture, writes John Reynolds.

Speaking at the launch of this year's Newstalk FM Student Enterprise Competition, O'Brien said: "We need to encourage people at a very early age to open their minds and think about enterprise so that we foster an enterprise culture. It's very important that SMEs do their bit to grow the economy and get young people setting up their own businesses. If you employ yourself, that's a success, and it's even better if you employ others as well."

As funding from banks and venture capitalists has become more difficult to access, start-ups are now raising smaller amounts of seed capital, in particular from family and friends, said O'Brien, who is chairman of the competition.

"This will continue to be a very important supply of capital for smaller businesses, and you also have the option of matching that money with funds from Enterprise Ireland and other agencies. If people have the right idea, they nearly always get the money," he said.

The country is "close to the bottom of the recession", he claimed, offering hope to Ireland's Generation Y, and encouraged this year's crop of university graduates fearing unemployment to consider either starting their own business or doing postgraduate studies, adding: "it may take longer to get a job, for obvious reasons. But ultimately they will get one."

"I don't feel that there's a risk of us having a 'lost generation' of young people. I definitely don't think we're back in the 1980s at all. There are now opportunities for graduates to do postgraduate studies until the recession is over. I think we're coming close to the bottom of this recession, and I think that we'll be coming out of it perhaps next year."

The competition, of which The Irish Timesis an associate sponsor, is in its fourth year and is exclusively open to Ireland's 15 Institutes of Technology and the National College of Ireland.

The closing date for entries is 14th October and entry forms must be completed through the competition website newstalk.ie/studententerprise.