Ireland hosts many US multinational’s European headquarters, but to remain a gateway for US companies accessing European or international markets it must be on top of its game.

This is particularly so at a time when the US administration is calling for American-headquartered global supply chains to come home and abandon international operations, according to Prof Donna Marshall, PhD head (vice-principal) of research, innovation and impact at UCD College of Business.

To stay relevant, we have to excel in several areas.

“The two things that our government should be investing in right now are education and sustainability and these are the two areas that are underfunded and not given the priority they desperately need. These are key to the future of not only Ireland but of the planet. We need to ensure that our companies and our country is transitioning in a fair and inclusive way to a low environmental impact future,” she says.

This is about hard economics, she says, with “future generations of our people having the skills to look at the world creatively and come up with ideas for new technologies, new ways of organising society, when automation ramps up after the Covid-19 crisis, and new ways of producing the goods and services we need without destroying our planet’s fragile ecosystems”.

Ireland continues to climb up the world rankings in terms of higher education, feeding into a talent pool that is attractive from a cost, competence and strategic capability perspective, says Dr John Bustard of the Department of Management, Leadership and Marketing at Ulster University.

Fortune 100 companies

This results in the necessary underpinning for partnerships to flourish.

One such recent example is USA incorporated Marvel Marketing, a marketing technology company that boasts almost 3,000 clients, ranging from Fortune 100 companies to global brands as their client base.

“They’ve chosen Ireland as a springboard in order to open up a new front for their digital marketing services across Europe. Therefore, in order to stay competitive, we must continue to remain attractive to such enterprise. To do this we need to continue to develop the best talents, support their appetite for learning and continue to build an adaptable, able and attractive workforce to continue to deliver value on these shores and beyond,” he says.

This article was written by Mimi Murray and first appeared July 3 2020, in a Special Report in The Irish Times.