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Around Dublin, software companies are continuing to expand. But well over 50% of their new hires are from outside Ireland. Luckily, Ireland is an attractive place to work (and play), so finding these employees is no problem, at least for now. But how this continued growth in these darkening times, and why the shortage of Irish people to meet it?

In the IT boom of the 1990s it was the economic practicalities that went wrong, while the possibilities were actually understated. Sector recovery quickly brought employment back to levels beyond those of the boom. Growth continues with no end in sight, as old applications are improved and new ones developed.

This growth will continue to bring challenges. Bridging the gap between application and technology is never likely to be easy. Ensuring systems fit requirements will always be challenging, particularly when the requirements are unclear or in a state of flux, as is often the case.

Many new opportunities will be missed as a result of application experts not understanding the technology and technical experts not understanding the application. Issues such as information quality and security won’t go away. Ways of spotting useful patterns in financial and other data will need improvement. Laws will need updating to protect against abuse of the technology.

Meeting these challenges will depend upon finding the right people. Here, the mistakes of the past cast a long shadow, at least as far as young people choosing degree courses and their parents are concerned.

Applications for computing courses have dropped dramatically all around the developed world and are being very slow to recover. As an example, the four year honours computing degree in Dublin College University graduated 224 students in 2005, 92 in 2006 and 78 in 2007; about 70 will be graduating in 2008 and the following few years. At a recent display of final-year projects, 140 people from 95 companies turned up to look at the work of 70 students.

While the sector is growing now, the long-term implications of a shortage of well-educated computer professionals are serious. We need to persuade young people to come back to IT.

The voice of the market should be heard, dispelling the shadow of the dot.com collapse, and letting students and their parents know that the jobs are there, and that there are good jobs, with a wide spectrum of career opportunities.

Nobody wants a return to the hype of the 1990s, but in reality the impact of IT on all our lives is only just beginning. It will be profound, and we need to prepare for it. We haven’t seen anything yet.

Professor Michael Ryan is head of the school of computing at Dublin City University.