Jobs plan to target games industry

Third-level roles in boosting the digital games industry and a scorecard system for ministers will form part of the Government’s long-awaited action plan for jobs, which is unveiled today.

A target of 100,000 new jobs by 2016 has been agreed and a ‘cluster development team’ made up of government officials, enterprise agencies and industry experts will work together to target niche areas for employment growth.

Richard Bruton, the jobs minister, will announce his plan alongside ministers, the Taoiseach and the tánaiste.

The plan will include a pilot digital games initiative in third-level institutions, which hopes to double the number of jobs in the sector to 2,500 by 2014.

This will bring together students from games, multimedia and animation courses, and be overseen by industry experts. Home and foreign companies involved in digital gaming will be targeted under the plan.

A source close to the minister said: “We can’t be world-leaders in everything, but if we move quickly and work hard we can eke out competitive advantage in certain niche areas where there is high potential for jobs growth. He is of the view that digital gaming is one such area”.

A number of leading producers of games already have a presence in Ireland. These include US group Activision Blizzard, the creator of X-Men, James Bond and Spider-Man, who have offices in Cork.

Big Fish Games, a leading producer of games for computers as well as phones, announced 30 jobs in Cork last week.

According to sources, a cluster development team will oversee targets. The team will include officials from government, the IDA and Enterprise Ireland as well as industry experts.

It is understood departments and ministers will be assessed regularly with scorecards.

The plan is also expected to recommend a number of reforms, including ways to cut out red tape and obstacles to job creation.

There were unconfirmed reports the plan will include a €100m fund for small businesses and start-ups.