Ireland's information technology sector seems to be shutting down just as NUI Galway is opening the doors of its new £9 million, 4,100 sq metre school of IT.

However, the energetic, enthusiastic Professor Gerry Lyons, who heads up the IT department, is undaunted, having lived and worked his way through two major downturns in the industry. The official opening, tomorrow, of a state-of-the-art building to house what has become the university's largest school, remains a cause for pride, he says.

"This is probably the start of the third downturn in the technology sector," he said, speaking before last Tuesday's catastrophic events. "But every industry is cyclical. The cycles in IT is fairly long, with upturns lasting five or six years and down turns one or two, so I'm very optimistic."

Speaking from his new office, with its "fantastic view of the river Corrib", he says the expert group on the future needs of industry, set up by the Government, predicted a need for 4,800 IT graduates per annum. "I think that's slightly optimistic. But, even if you take the view we will need 2,500 graduates, we are only producing between 1,100 and 1,200 at present."

Educated in Cork, the young Lyons conformed to the wannabe-engineer clichΘ, being one of those children who neither played with the toy or its wrapping but who preferred to take the toy apart and play with its insides. "My 11-year-old is the same, I now have great sympathy for my parents, who had to cope with bits and pieces strewn everywhere."

In UCC, he opted for civil engineering because there were no jobs in electronics and there were "scare stories in the papers about people coming back from MIT and Berkeley and not getting jobs". He wasn't alone in his decision: about 80 per cent of his class went into civil engineering.

"The only employers of electronics graduates then were the P and T, the ESB and EI, a firm based in Dundalk. When I graduated I wasn't interested in practising as a civil engineer, I was always more interested in the mechanical and electrical side. There was no computing then.

I got a job with An Foras Tal·ntas, working on renewable energy modelling - solar heating, wind farms. That was the late 1970s. We'd already had one oil crisis and were heading into a second. Renewable energy was where the buzz was." He was based in Carlow but spent a lot of time in the US, in Duke University, North Carolina, working on joint projects.

"I was an engineer working with people from a huge number of backgrounds: economists, biologists, biochemists, microbiologists, agronomists . . . It was a fabulous place to work. My wife tells me she used to have to peel me off the ceiling, I was so wound up."

But, after 10 years it was "hair-shirt time for the Irish Government and they decided to close down or rationalise the various research bodies. A lot of younger staff left. I didn't see any future there so I decided on a career change. At that stage I had my MSc and PhD."

Lyons joined Digital Equipment, and was based in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, where his role was to manage the research being conducted in universities and other institutions in Ireland and throughout Europe. "But it was at a time when the golden days of growth and innovation were coming to an end and the hard times were setting in. I began to get frustrated as there were fewer opportunities to develop new ideas. It was back to basics. I ended up being IS manager in Digital's plant. In 1991, Digital started to wind down operations in Ireland.

"Looking to the future, I realised I wanted a job where I could contribute more personally rather than being a manager." The position in what was then UCG provided the change to build a service from scratch.

He had to persuade his family to move to Galway as they liked Clonmel. "We had one child in Dublin, one in Tipperary, another in Galway and we're both from Cork. It makes for interesting times when it comes to GAA finals."

UCG was to prove a major challenge. "When I moved into IT in UCG in November 1991, there were no courses, no offices, no staff. There was a lot of potential but no resources." In an ironic twist of fate, his salary, for the first three years, was paid by his ex-employer, Digital, which had funded the position. (Lyons didn't know this when he accepted the job.)

Initially, the IT department was set up as an IT centre, which acted on an inter-faculty basis, making IT available to all of the faculties. "It was feared that if IT was set up within a faculty, it would have been myopic and insular. IT is very much part of business, commerce, arts, engineering and so on."

The first major phase was to build a suite of academic programmes and bring the academic credentials for UCG up to par with DCU, UL and others, says Lyons. "It has taken us the best part of 10 years to build the internal resources and reputation."

Today, the flagship course is a four-year honours BSc, which takes in 100 students each year. "It's very popular - there's a placement in third year and students are in big demand still.

"In 1996, we took IT into humanities and offered it as a full arts subject. About 140 people take it in first year, with 40 or 50 taking it as one of their two subjects for degree. We also offer a higher diploma and a master's course and we have launched a joint degree with the department of electronics (electronics and computer engineering)."

The new four-floor building will house 800 students, with one floor entirely devoted to research. Much of the current research is collaborative and there is ongoing work with disciplines such as archaeology, astrophysics, engineering, maths, medicine and oceanography.

"It has finally been set up as a statutory department. The IT centre concept has gone. We are now the largest academic department in the college. We are affiliated primarily to the engineering faculty but also to arts and science."

Lyons says the Government has targeted IT and biotechnology as two major research areas. The new building will facilitate NUI Galway playing its part.

"My view is that Ireland is moving beyond its manufacturing industry base (where the jobs losses are) to high cost, valued-added industry. Just as we have produced graduates over the past 10 to 15 years, we now need to produce postgraduates."

The official opening of the information technology building, NUI Galway, is set for tomorrow.