Apple shows the potential of investment for all Irish regions

Cork got an interesting boost last week from the world’s largest company and it ought to wake everyone up to the potential for far more investment in the region, including towns and villages outside the city.

Let’s start with the basics. In San Francisco, it now costs $2,000 or more per month to rent a simple one- bedroom apartment.

That’s €1,880 in our money. You can rent a four-bedroom house outside Cork for that price presently or a two-bedroom flat in Cork for closer to €1,200.

Apple wants to add 1,000 employees to its Cork base and each of these will be spenders in the local economy, boosting demand for everything from restaurants to houses and forming families that add multiple economic benefits to the area.

Aside from the installed skill-set, local third-level resources and a benign Government policy towards inward investment, the company will also have an eye on relative labour costs.

The latter are inextricably linked to housing and living costs which have become an issue in Silicon Valley lately as surges in IT-related employment have pressured local resources.

This is where Ireland’s competitiveness can be put to work now.

As communications technology advances, the cost of web access and its bandwidth are growing exponentially in Ireland, while prices are falling.

That holds out the prospect of employees in the IT universe being able to connect from geographies that offer a high quality of life while being inside a virtual global company campus.

Kinsale, Midleton, Mallow, and Macroom are all examples of towns that offer remarkable quality of life attributes in a challenging world.

Each has access to education resources, price sensitive accommodation, a rural or coastal environment and road networks that connect them to Cork in about 30 minutes.

A 30-minute commute is considered gold dust in major cities, so Cork and the rest of our regional cities need to hammer home their competitive advantages when pitching for more investment.

Apple is the standout announcement over the last week but the Cork area is festooned with global corporations in the IT and pharmaceutical sectors in particular.

Each and all of these could be contemplating expansion and all should be high priorities for IDA and Chamber of Commerce seduction plans.

I had a chuckle a couple of weeks ago as the hysteria around the Web Summit and its much-trumpeted shift to Portugal was creating catatonic responses from the Dublin-centric media.

While all that palaver was going on, a corporation like Apple was quietly and confidentially working through its due diligence with the IDA and Government before making a spectacular announcement.

As the Web Summit was shuffling off, a blue-chip company was making news, without hired supermodels, that is of far greater import to Ireland and its future as a technology powerhouse.

These trends among global investors have profound implications for so-called rural Ireland.

As towns continue to struggle economically the attributes they possess, spare capacity, inexpensive housing, empty offices and retail space, proximity to the countryside, are in high demand by those who work in technology.

Connecting the demand by international companies for such resources with the supply that exists in Ireland outside of Dublin is a great challenge and opportunity for policymakers.

Alongside the continuous campaigns by Government agencies, we need to see local bodies and business associations focus hard on making their areas more visible to the globe-trotting strategists in companies that want to expand across Europe from a base in a safe, competitively priced and connected location.

Ireland ticks these boxes, but cities such as Cork, and satellite towns around them, are standout destinations now that will be further embellished as web connectivity continues to accelerate.

Joe Gill is director of corporate broking at Goodbody Stockbrokers. His views are personal.