Your Call competition winners hire just 1 person

BILLED as a project that would “transform our economy”, the two successful Your Country Your Call projects have hired just a single member of staff, over a year after the two winners were announced.

Neil Leyden’s Digital Media Centre and a Data Island Strategy, proposed by father-and-son team Cianán Clancy and Colm MacFhlannachadha, beat about 9,000 entries to be declared winners in September 2010.

They received a cash prize of €100,000 and a development fund of €500,000 earmarked to implement each proposal, a process that was supposed to be completed by September 30 this year.

However, a spokesman for An Smaoineamh Mór Ltd, which ran the competition, said feasibility studies into the proposals only began in October 2010.

Defending the competition, Padraig McKeon, a member of the Your Country Your Call steering committee, said the winning entries were “concepts” and that a lot of work had been done in the past 12 months to flesh out the ideas into concrete business proposals.

He said two people are working full-time on developing the projects. A retired project director is working on a pro bono basis and digital media consultant Mr Leyden has been hired by An Smaoineamh Mór. Mr Clancy and Mr MacFhlannachadh are no longer involved in the project.

“The rights to these ideas are owned by An Smaoineamh Mór and the plan is to incorporate one or two companies which will take over control of progressing the projects — essentially, a hand-over process,” Mr McKeon said.

“These new companies will be actively looking for shareholders and investment to grow and develop what we hope will be very successful projects.”

While no shareholders have confirmed their intention to invest, high-level talks have taken place, and a large portion of the initial €1 million investment fund remains in place, he said.

Mr McKeon said the two projects complemented each other and said online data management was going to be a huge growth area.

“We had a meeting in May, to update everyone on the progress, and there were a number of high-powered individuals from large companies in attendance. One experienced investor cautioned us against pitching too low, in terms of investment, as in this area, and said that eight and nine-figure sums are standard.”

Citing the arrival of LinkedIn, Facebook and Google in Ireland, he said there was a cluster of digital media companies in Dublin and said this base could be further developed.

Mr McKeon said he would likely have more detail about the progress of the projects within three weeks but cautioned against expectation of a big jobs’ announcement, saying “baby steps” were being taken.