IT business offers lifeline to rural communities

THE dot.com implosion may have thinned the ranks of dapper young internet execs out for a fast buck, but e-Ireland isn't dead and gone.

There are dozens of tech success stories hidden down back roads all over the country. For those organisations who saw the technology as a means to an end rather than the end in itself, the downturn merely shrunk the market, it didn’t destroy it.

12Travel packages Irish holidays for foreign visitors. Despite last year’s disastrous tourist season, the company grew by 60%. It’s run from converted farm buildings in Castletownsend, Co Cork.

Twenty miles up the road in Ballingeary, Bard Na Gleann, run by Tom Fitzgerald, specialises in technical writing for the telecommunications industry. It has two other branch offices, one in Kerry, one in Silicon Valley.

Wolfsense has a small manufacturing plant making air monitoring systems in Scariff in east Clare and a staff based in two continents.

Nana Luke, chairperson of Teleworking Ireland, explains that it’s all down to e-working. Her 10-minute commute brings her to another small office in Scariff, where she’s technical director of Bealtaine, an organisation that brings the diverse skills of other remote workers together to create project teams for specific jobs.

She says the technology offers huge potential for keeping rural communities thriving. “Basically, teleworking or e-working is location-independent. In the case of my own company, we’re based in a town of eight-hundred people in east Clare.

We work with clients nationally and internationally and we also work with a network of e-workers nationally and international. It’s purely about knowledge and how you access that knowledge, how you sell those services.

It’s not huge in terms of investment and it’s not huge in terms of the kinds of facilities that are required.” Bealtaine has over 100 hundred e-workers on its books, including programmers, instructional and graphic designers and IT and soft-skills trainers.

The company has had particular success with e-learning organisations (companies that design and deliver training via the web), having run projects for the likes of Timelearning.com and Intuition Publishing. Bealtaine responded to the downturn by diversifying and they now provide translation services.

All of the Irish content on the Government’s Oasis, Basis and Reach websites was translated by teams of e-workers put together by Bealtaine and based on the Aran Islands. As the technology improves, the range of services that can be delivered remotely increases.

Before the benefits can be fully tapped, however, Irish business has to get more comfortable with the idea of remote management. “Call centres in Dublin are crying out for people,” says Ms. Luke.

The concern among the e-working community is that when roll-out of the upgraded network commences, rural areas will be at the back of the queue.

It is hoped that when the NUI begins its virtual BSc in rural development, the infrastructure to support the course will have improved a lot.

The first NUI degree programme to be delivered via the web was launched by the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuiv last month.

Developed in collaboration with the four NUI colleges in Cork, Dublin, Galway and Maynooth, students will sit the course using the internet, online classrooms and interactive chat-rooms.

There will also be tutorials at local learning centres while back-up course material will be available on CD.

Professor Michael Cuddy of NUI Galway sees a central role for technology in the development of rural communities in the years ahead.

“I see that as being very critical. What it takes though is people with imagination and creativity,” Prof Cuddy adds.