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Tuesday, 29.04.2008
Career Opportunities in Ireland

While studying in Ireland you may come to the same conclusion that many others have arrived at and decide to start your career here. With the second highest wages in the EU and a UN report that found Ireland to be the world’s fifth most desirable country to live in, it is definitely worth your consideration...

The current global economic downturn is affecting Ireland as much as anywhere else, and job losses have occurred over the past year. However, regrettable as this is, these redundancies have largely occurred in sectors not normally associated with the career ambitions of graduates, such as the manufacturing industry. In other words, Ireland is still a great place for graduates of any nationality to find highly paid and secure jobs.

The following is just a sample of the areas where there are there excellent career opportunities for graduates:

Engineering: The strong demand for engineers is a by-product of rapid development in industries such as pharmaceuticals, medical device manufacture, and IT; and of the continued reluctance of Irish students to sign up for engineering courses in sufficient numbers. Opportunities currently exist for civil, electrical/electronic, chemical, design and development engineers among others.

Finance: Ireland is currently ranked as the 15th most important financial centre in the world according to the Global Financial Centres Index. Close to 8,000 new positions have been created in the finance and business sector since 1999, and there is still a healthy demand for skilled graduates. Career areas where are there particularly acute skills shortages include accounting, quantitative finance, and compliance.

Healthcare: Ireland has a long-established tradition of excellence in medical and healthcare education, and of employing non-nationals in a growing sector that accounts for over eight per cent of national employment. Some of the careers where there are currently skills shortages include doctors, radiographers, dentists, pharmacists, educational and clinical psychologists, and numerous forms of therapist (occupational, speech and physiotherapy).

Information Technology (IT): An often-quoted fact is that seven of the world’s top ten IT companies has a substantial base in Ireland; over 60,000 people are employed in this sector. A recent survey by Dublin City University (May 2007) estimated a total of 17,400 job vacancies in Ireland’s ICT (Information and Communications Technology) industry. Such is the economy’s demand for skilled graduates that the tuition fee for dozens of postgraduate IT courses have been reduced by subsidies from the Government’s Graduate Skills Conversion Programme.

A welcome development in 2007 for non-EU students in Ireland was the implementation of the Third Level Graduate Scheme. Previously, once these students graduated they required a work permit or ‘green card’ in order to stay in the country. This frequently led to the stressful scenario whereby non-EU students who wished to remain in Ireland would be frantically seeking a job during the time when they needed to focus on preparing for exams or completing a dissertation.

The scheme is in effect an extension to a student’s visa, allowing graduates of a primary, masters or doctorate degree to remain in Ireland for six months from the day upon which they receive their exam results. Graduates can work for up to 40 hours a week and/or seek employment and apply for further permission to remain in the state.