Ireland has a voluntary professional association for teleworkers, Telework Ireland. The organisation operates across the whole island of Ireland and has funding from Cooperation North to provide a development officer for community projects. The focus of Telework Ireland is to support micro-enterprises. The Irish Communications Workers Union has a special membership category for teleworkers and is actively recruiting members in this area covering both conventional employees and the self employed.
Three major Irish companies, Aer Rianta (airports authority), Motorola and Telecom Eireann are currently carrying out telework pilot projects. Otherwise, only a small number of cases of individual employees taking part in formal employer-led telework schemes are known to the Irish employer's organisation. The 1995 Telefutures report suggested that (taking into account self-employed people and nomadic workers) about 15,000 people were regularly teleworking for 2-3 days a week, with 100,000 people teleworking occasionally once or twice a month.
IBEC, in conjunction with the Communications Workers Union (CWU) and the European Telework Development initiative (a project funded by the European Commission under the ACTS programme), is currently producing a leaflet for human resource managers who wish to introduce teleworking. The Communications Workers Union (CWU) is widening its membership away from the state telecoms company to include workers in other areas of information work such as telework. A general information telework leaflet is also currently under preparation by the CWU30.
The government approach to telework issues is laid out in the Information Society Ireland (ISI)31 report published in Spring 1997. Implementation of the report is being carried out by the Information Society Commission, established under the office of the Taoiseach (prime minister). As part of the ISI activities, state telephone company Telecom Eireann has been running a competition to find Ireland's information age town. The winning will be wired up with 15m Irish Pounds worth of ISDN and Internet connections32. The Department of Health indirectly funds a number of disability and teleworking projects including training courses run in five centres around the country.
| Wordwrights Wordwrights is a small business which prepares training materials for distance learning, specialising in training courses delivered over the Internet or through computer based training. Manager Brian Goggin operates a network of about 10 self employed teleworkers from his home in a village near Limerick. His colleagues include subject specialists, technical editors, proof-readers, and desktop publishers around Ireland. Some of the CBT expertise is supplied cross-border by teleworkers in Britain and the US. Wordwrights clients include major Irish organisations such as the Bank of Ireland and the Irish Management Institute.33 |
The Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and Forbairt, both state economic development bodies, have been active in developing call centres in Ireland. A combination of factors have made Ireland an attractive location for call centres aimed at the European market. These include the highly educated workforce, a 10% corporation tax guaranteed to the year 2010, etc. The strategy has successfully encouraged a number of US-based companies to establish pan-European call centres in Ireland. In total, about 3,500 people are now employed in this way. The Irish Tourist Board and the Irish Trade Board both operate award winning web sites promoting Ireland.
| Dell Computers Dell Computers has a major telemarketing centre in Bray, near Dublin. The call centre employs over 400 people providing technical support and sales for the UK and Irish markets. Recently the company has launched an international web site where customers can buy computers after checking prices and options online. Each country has a section on the site in local language giving prices in local currency. All sales orders received by phone or by Internet are transmitted electronically to Dell's European Manufacturing Centre in Limerick, which employs over 1,300 people and has assembled over 1 million customised machines. Worldwide, Dell is selling over $2m a day over the Internet.34 |
Although Ireland has a number of telecottages these are generally less prevalent than in Britain due to a lack of funding sources for training. Some examples are:
| Newport Telecottage Newport Telecottage is the first telecottage in Ireland to receive direct state support from the local vocational educational committee (VEC) in North Tipperary. The telecottage offers standard IT training services, and also carries out administrative work for the VEC and for FAS, the state training agency. In addition, the telecottage manages part of the TRBDI project which will create a distributed third level college for the county. Students will use outreach centres, laptops and email to keep in contact with their tutors. The first intake of students will be in autumn 1998, and use of the Irish language is encouraged by the college. An ISDN videoconferencing link at the telecottage is planned to increase the tutorial support available. iocts@iol.ie |
All mainstream political parties are represented on the web plus a number of local and national newspapers and many TV and radio shows. The Irish Times has an award winning web-site and the Irish Emigrant, a weekly newsletter is distributed by email to about 50,000 subscribers.
There has been strong interest in teleworking from the media including special supplements in Sunday newspapers, articles in the Irish Times weekly computer pages and information in IT sector publications. It is hoped to encourage a main morning radio programme, to support a 'Telecommuting Day', as part of European Telework Week 1997.
Next section
- Previous sectionReturn to European Telework Online home page
This html version of the European Commission report is provided and maintained by Marco
Colonna, Telework Specialist in the European Telework Online website team.
Please address comments, suggestions and corrections for the status report to editors-tw97@eto.org.uk
This page address: http://www.eto.org.uk/twork/tw97/tw97-3-9.htm
Page last updated: 24 October 1997