IDA and Bruton search Europe for emerging players with the right stuff

29 Jul 2015

The IDA and Minister Bruton are heading to Frankfurt to encourage European start-ups to headquarter in Ireland

IDA Ireland and Jobs Minister Richard Bruton TD have departed on a two-day mission to Europe, targeting jobs in the financial services and tech sectors. They will be meeting employers already located in Ireland, as well as emerging start-ups in fintech and manufacturing.

The IDA-organised mission to London and Frankfurt will comprise several one-on-one meetings with senior decision-makers from companies that have already established operations in Ireland, as well as “potential new name investors.”

“On this investment mission to London and Frankfurt, we will be discussing specific job-creation projects in Ireland with leading global companies in the technology, financial services and manufacturing sectors. In keeping with our driving focus on regional job-creation, many of the potential projects being discussed relate to locations outside of Dublin,” Minister Bruton said.

“I am confident that the discussions held this week will lead to jobs being created in the near future in cities and towns right across the country,” Bruton added.

The IDA has been focusing heavily on start-ups in recent years and, in fact, many of the organisation’s biggest coups were start-ups in their own right when they were first attracted to Ireland – prime examples are Apple locating in Cork in 1981, Google in Dublin in 2002, and Facebook in Dublin in 2008.

This tradition has continued with players like Airbnb, Slack, Wrike, Twilio, Twitter Udemy and NuoDB all locating in Ireland while still early in their history. Only yesterday, taxi hailing app player Uber announced that 300 jobs are coming to Limerick city.

An example of a European fast-emerging player encouraged to locate in Ireland is Zalando, an online fashion platform that is creating 200 engineering and data science jobs in Dublin over the next two years.

IDA chief executive Martin Shanahan explained: “A key part of the IDA’s new strategy is increasing the focus on Europe as a source market for foreign investment – these investment missions, where companies get the opportunity to speak directly with Government, are an important part of the process of convincing companies to invest in Ireland.”

Frankfurt skyline image, via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com