IDA aims to tackle negative perceptions

A SERIES of meetings with the heads of the top 65 multinationals based in Ireland is being undertaken by the IDA to counter negative perceptions of the country abroad.

IDA senior executive Brendan McDonagh accused the Irish media of being “really good at creating negative headlines” and he said the foreign media was taking the most emotive of these headlines and circulating them to an international audience.

He told a conference organised by Engineers Ireland that it was now a “huge challenge” to project a positive image about Ireland and we were a good nation to “talk ourselves down”.

“We have gone from having an hour’s conversation with the chief executive about the business to now having a 20-minute conversation trying to kill all the negativity that has been put out there about Ireland,” he said.

IDA chief executive Barry O’Leary recently went on a two-week tour in the US meeting the heads of US companies in Ireland.

Mr McDonagh, who is the IDA department manager for planning, EU and strategy, said the IDA was “working through their clients” and hoped to get to all of the 65 targeted companies by the end of March.

Mr McDonagh said Mr O’Leary had been a regular guest on Bloomberg and CNBC news channels, and would fly out at short notice to do interviews promoting Ireland, but they were unable to get similar media opportunities for him in Ireland.

The IDA is spending millions of euro on advertisements on business television in the US and it also has a billboard campaign in the major US airports.

Mr McDonagh also told the meeting, organised as part of Engineers Week 2011, that recent weather events, most notably the two cold snaps and the ash cloud, had “exposed our peripherality”.

He said the fact that workers were not able to move around put the emphasis on the telecoms network. “I sat in front of a guy in Europe who said if he had realised when our weather shut down that our telecom network was so poor, he would never have come here,” said Mr McDonagh.

However, he stressed the Irish broadband network was adequate for many major multinationals who depended on good coverage, and if our broadband was as bad as some people suggested “all these guys would go home”.

He said there was good news about the foreign direct investment in Ireland. Almost 11,000 jobs were created last year, double the number from 2009, and a drop of between 13 and 15 per cent in unit labour costs in the last two years had made manufacturing here attractive again. He cited the medical devices company Hollister in Ballina which announced the creation of 250 jobs last year.

Incoming Engineers Ireland president PJ Rudden said he knew of one project which had the potential to create 9,000 jobs in Ireland, but the backers were getting “cold feet” because of negative perceptions of Ireland involved. They were “getting bothered about the reputation of Ireland Inc”. He declined to name the project involved.