Engineers head critical of ‘past arrogance’
He said Ireland needed better processes across society to restore public confidence and boost economic recovery.
Mr Horn, co-founder of Iona Technologies, said Ireland must focus on ingenuity and more effective regulation. He said: “As a result of the failures in our society and in our systems, many of the public are disillusioned and frankly apprehensive about the future. Professionals in many disciplines – from banking, to medicine to the religious – have been damaged by scandals.”
He said: “There is a time and place for postmortems on the Celtic Tiger, but our current national priority must be on urgently rebuilding our economy.”
He was speaking at the annual Engineers Ireland conference in Cork.
“Engineering considers systems in a holistic way, building in stress tests and fail safe alternatives, and by using ingenuity and experience to overcome challenging problems in the interest of society at large,” he said.
Mr Horn also warned: “Emerging countries are no longer just doing things cheaply... They’re innovating too by re-designing products and making commercial breakthroughs in everything from health care to telecommunications.” He said business have to innovate to compete, adding: “Engineers are the epitome of this creativity and ingenuity and will underpin this.”
