About one-third of the PCs sold in Europe are made in Ireland. And it's not just about PCs. Some 300 electronics companies engage in a range of activities from advanced silicon design and fabrication to low-cost high-volume electronic equipment manufacturing, according to the IDA.

Paul Sliney, deputy head of Cork IT's electrical and electronic engineering department, says the industry offers "varied and exciting careers in a young high-change industry."

For students interested in pursuing a career in electronics there is a bewildering array of third-level courses on offer from certs to diplomas to degrees. And it is possible to progress from cert to diploma to degree. Students entering ab-initio engineering degrees need a minimum of a C3 in higher-level Leaving Cert maths with UCD requiring a higher-level B3. However students entering cert/diploma courses do not need higher-level maths.

For instance, Sliney says Cork IT is "heavily committed to the ladder of opportunity which operates in the IT sector. Any student entering the system can see a path to PhD." There is no bar to somebody with a modest Leaving Cert, who does well in his or her college exams. Some students may do poorly in their Leaving Cert but blossom later, says Sliney. "Of the six PhD candidates in our department at the moment three of them came from the cert, diploma, degree sequence," he adds. Electronic engineering graduates are extremely well paid. Sliney estimates graduate engineers can command starting salaries of up to £20,000 while technicians may get up to £15,000 in their first year in industry. "We are not aware of any unemployed graduates at any level," he adds.

Padraic Gallagher, co-operative education manager (engineering and science) in UL notes that there is a national shortage of electronic engineers. There has been a good deal of emphasis on the software skills shortages but there is also a need for hardware people, he says, with demand from integrated circuit design companies in particular. Professor David Wilcox of NUI Galway agrees that jobs scene is very good nationally with many students getting multiple job offers.

TCD, UCD and NUI Galway offer electronic engineering within their omnibus engineering programmes. These programmes allow students time to sample the various disciplines before they specialise. UCD and NUI Galway have a common first year while TCD has two common years. The commonentry degree is a recent advent in NUI Galway and Wilcox says it has proved very successful.

Last year, NUI Galway launched a new degree in electronics and computer engineering. This programme is shared between the engineering and the IT centre. In addition to the traditional hardware, students are exposed to software areas such as object oriented programming, distributed systems and telecommunications software.