THRIVING Region in focus
WorkLAB, a co-working space in Waterford. “These ready-made landing spaces are a very attractive value proposition for companies because they don’t have to sign up to long-term leases,” says McDonald. “It’s all about ease of doing business in regional locations. The business community and stakeholders have come together to make starting an operation in the South East as seamless as possible.”
the services side – they are the gold dust behind the hardware and software. I would not have been able to recruit those people if it meant travelling for an hour to an office. We also have a very highlyskilled technical person who lives in Wexford. He had many job opportunities in Dublin but didn’t want to spend his life travelling, so this worked out well for us.
ONGOING SUPPORT Government and industry-led supports are also helping to draw new entrants to the area, with the aim of creating enduring relationships. “In the IDA Ireland regional offices, we can take a deeper dive into everything from helping a company find that initial property offering, to assisting recruitment, to interacting with the various stakeholders such as the county council, to connecting with the third level institute. We have an effective ‘full service’ local offering where we can not only help companies at the outset of their investment journey but become their partner as they build, grow and scale their operation – it’s trying to problem-solve any question or query that they may have as they build out their teams, becoming a key strategic partner agency for the long term.” Crystal Valley Tech is an industry-led group that was launched in February 2018 with the assistance of the IDA Ireland South East Regional Team. The aim of this industry tech group is to showcase the growing technology cluster in the region, its capabilities and activities. “The aim is to build a tech community that everyone can benefit from. Its three pillars are the promotion of the tech scene; recruitment and fostering a sense of collaboration around recruitment; education and collaboration with the third level institutions, and regional skills forum where all stakeholders in the education arena come together to discuss issues that are relevant to overall skills in the various different sectors. It’s growing and will become even more influential in the years to come.”
GRANDPAD WEXFORD
Dr Edwina Dunne, Business Director, GrandPad Europe
Dr Edwina Dunne, Business Director, GrandPad Europe IDA Ireland was instrumental in showing GrandPad a number of locations. We picked Gorey because it’s just an hour from Dublin Airport, it has access to very skilled people who would work from home, and The Hatch Lab. We loved the shared office space at The Hatch Lab: it’s an impressive new building that offers excellent accommodation possibilities for a new emerging company. It also offers the opportunity to network with others. I’ve sourced promotional materials and storage space through connections I’ve made here. Remote working is the method for the GrandPad Service people and Gorey offers the mix of technical and soft skills we need. We’ve been able to access five highly-skilled, knowledgeable people on
RED HAT WAT E R F O R D
James Mernin, Director, Cloud Services, Red Hat Red Hat set up an R&D base in Waterford in 2014 when it acquired FeedHenry, a start-up company founded in Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) that specialised in mobile and cloud technologies. Since then, the number of Red Hat departments with a footprint in Waterford has grown significantly, largely due to the strong regional talent pool which is supported by a strong graduate pipeline from WIT. People see Red Hat as quite the tech beacon, locally and regionally, and we enjoy a healthy number of quality applications for our open roles. We’ve had a number of people relocate to Waterford also, because they want to work for Red Hat, it being the world’s leader in open source, who are surprised and delighted to find Red Hat has a base here. They are also pleasantly surprised Red Hat’s office in Waterford to see the growing number of other tech companies in the region, and the other developments happening, such as the North Quays development and the airport expansion. The cost of living is less here than other parts of the country, commute times are excellent and you can be on a beach within ten minutes. That all adds up. Making decisions based on that, it’s a good time to move to the sunny South East.
IDAIRELAND.COM
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