Two things of note happened last week on the employment front. Jacob’s biscuit manufacturers in Tallaght closed down and Beckman Coulter announced a €200 Million investment with NUI Galway.

This has been happening for a long time now - low tech jobs are being lost and will not be seen again in an economy such as ours and to some extent these are being replaced by high tech jobs.

I was sitting in Wilton House on Friday morning at the offices of Science Foundation Ireland and I read a statement by forfás on Outward Direct Investment (ODI). For the first time ODI is larger than FDI (Foreign Direct Investment or Inward Direct Investment). This manifests itself in two main places - offshore banking and outsourcing of low-skill jobs to countries where it is done cheaper.

If we roll this process on a few years, we find ourselves in a situation where the only unskilled jobs will be in cleaning and the like. Manufacturing biscuits or T-shirts, etc. will be a thing of the past. The building industry is also reducing to a more sustainable level, with a loss of labouring jobs, among others.

Therefore, we run the risk of having an excess of unskilled labour. The solutions, as far as I can see them are to either selectively recruit high-tech people from abroad or ensure that Irish people take skills courses, rather than having to hope for manufacturing jobs to become available. The third option is that the unskilled labour force works for very low wages and I don’t think that this ever happens.

I know that IBEC and the IDA and Enterprise Ireland see this issue as something of an oncoming train wreck, but it still doesn’t seem to have made its way into the public’s conscious. However, if you look at it, the sugar industry is gone, making biscuits here is no longer viable, Tayto looked like they were going to close some time ago, but they are staying going for now, Dunlop are long gone, Fruit of the Loom are gone and when the business people get used to outsourcing their manufacturing, not only will we not be able to attract that kind of business to Ireland, we won’t be able to hold on to what we have.

We are certainly not late and the IDA are doing a brilliant job in securing new investment such as that announced by Beckman Coulter, but soon society will begin to notice that unemployment in the low-skills area will climb and with it will come all the ills of unemployment.

Comments welcome.

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