Jobs fair tries to tempt talent back home

A jobs fair aimed at bringing the talents of young Irish people back home was under way today in the heart of wealthy Manhattan.

The cross-border initiative was launched by Stormont Higher and Further Education Minister Sean Farren and Health and Children Minister Micheal Martin.

The Jobs Ireland campaign has joined forces with Northern Ireland’s Back to your Future campaign to present the face of a new, confident island.

More than 10,000 people are expected to attend the event - the first of its kind to be organised by the respective organisations in both parts of Ireland.

Both men will be pushing the message that Ireland is now the place to be, with improved salaries, a great quality of life and the prospect of peace.

Mr Farren told New Yorkers, blitzed by negative images of Northern Ireland that it was ‘‘the place to make a better and brighter future’’.

‘‘In the past, thousands of our brightest and best young people have felt that they have had to leave home to further their careers,’’ he said.

‘‘Now all that has changed - instead of looking for jobs for people, now we are looking for people for jobs.’’

Until now the exodus of peoples between Ireland and America has been almost exclusively one way.

The Ulster Presbyterians who left the shores of Ireland in search of a better life in the New World and the Irish Catholics escaping famine and prejudice to carve out a new existence among the immigrant populations of New York.

In recent years, educated young Irish people have left their homeland in their thousands drawn by the huge pay and opportunities to be had in the Land of the Free.

Now, Mr Farren and Mr Martin have gone west to try to claim back some of that abundant talent.

With the economies booming and unemployment negligible, the IT and electronic businesses sprouting up are starved of a skilled workforce.

Speaking alongside his colleague from the Republic at the conference centre on Fifth Avenue, Mr Farren spoke of the fast-growing opportunities now to be had.

‘‘What we are hoping to do at this Jobsfair is to highlight those opportunities and encourage those who left and indeed others, to look at what’s on offer on this side of the Atlantic.

‘‘We want to attract back high quality skills and people.’’

He urged people to look past the headlines which have appeared over the past 30 years of civil strife and to discover a different Northern Ireland.

‘‘Northern Ireland can provide a lifestyle of the highest quality, with education, health, social and recreational facilities on a par with the best of Europe,’’ he said.

While Jobsireland is highlighting opportunities in a range of sectors, Northern Ireland’s Training and Employment Agency is concentrating on the ICT and electronic jobs.

Joining the government organisation at the Jobsfair were executives from four Northern Ireland-based companies, Eircom NI, BIC Systems, Singularity and Kainos, as well as the Software Industry Federation and Engineering Training Council.

The New York event is the last in an intensive three city tour of the States by Mr Farren. On the first leg, he visited the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta - which has established a tradition of excellence in technological research and education.

He then joined other politicians from Northern Ireland and the Republic for the St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Washington at the weekend.