Work visas ‘can help solve woes’

Work visas are key to solving our economic crisis, according to a leading IBM executive who reckons that, in five years time, the Irish tech sector could plug the hole in the budget deficit.

Chairman of IT@cork and IBM executive Denis Collins said to fill the skills gap in the technology sector there would need to be a huge increase in the number of visas issued to allow people to come and work here.

“We could need anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 visas a year for the next three to five years, but equally important is to accelerate more conversion courses for the indigenous population for guys who were engineers and could be project managers, guys who have a bit of programming skill and could leverage for programming jobs and people who have language skills,” he said.