Implications of Dell leaving Ireland?

cronos

How would it be possible to prevent Dell leaving Ireland (If they are thinking about it). The provide 5% of GNP, what can we do to keep them here?

suckslikeafox

GNP is an arbitrary measure, I wouldnt be so concerned about that.

As for the job loss, I thought they were tyring to sell the plants as a going concern?

Supercell

suckslikeafox wrote: »

GNP is an arbitrary measure, I wouldnt be so concerned about that.

As for the job loss, I thought they were tyring to sell the plants as a going concern?

With in depth analysis like that its no wonder our tiger economy is the envy of the world.

the_syco

suckslikeafox wrote: »

As for the job loss, I thought they were tyring to sell the plants as a going concern?

Look at Gateway.

Dell are going the way of Gateway. Gateway used to make to sell made-to-order computers in Europe, but then went the route of only selling in the shops. It seems Dell are doing just that.

As people are no longer needed to put X part into Y case, as you'd need if the machines were made-to-order, there would be a lot less work to do. So instead of moving parts from A country to B country, so that in B country the computer can be made up and shipped out, the entire computer can just be made in A country, and shipped as a computer to be sold in a shop in B country.

Because of this trend away from made to order, into the prebuilt model, I'd say the people in the Dell factories may not have a bright future. The techs, if still there, may be placed under an outsourcing company that will handle their pay, allowing Dell to just pay the outsourcing company one bulk payment, and saving themselves money in the process.

Who else still does made-to-order PC's in the UK or Ireland?

ongarite

IMO, Dell plant in Limerick will be closed by this time next year.
Dell's business model doesn't make sense anymore especially with laptop sales having excedding desktop machines.
Why manufacture all the laptop parts, then ship them to Ireland, USA.. for final assembly when you can have that done in Asia where all the components are made.
Dell is the ONLY PC manufacturer not to out-source to Asian third-party companies, Micheal Dell has obviously realised this and is taking Dell in a new direction.

cronos

ongarite wrote: »

IMO, Dell plant in Limerick will be closed by this time next year.
Dell's business model doesn't make sense anymore especially with laptop sales having excedding desktop machines.
Why manufacture all the laptop parts, then ship them to Ireland, USA.. for final assembly when you can have that done in Asia where all the components are made.
Dell is the ONLY PC manufacturer not to out-source to Asian third-party companies, Micheal Dell has obviously realised this and is taking Dell in a new direction.

Lets say your right. Then what are the next steps... thats really what the point of this thread is. What can we compete on. What companies can we attract to replace these jobs. There are around 10,000 jobs tied up by dell in ireland.

ongarite

All again my opinion:
We are screwed and its all our own fault. There is no new industry to come into this country to magically fix is all up again. It was the tech sector in the 80s/90s, medical sector in 90s/00s.
Tech sector is dead and medical sector is rationalizing and cutting back on the big spends.

We got greedy, fat and cocky with our success and now its come back to haunt us. The real Celtic Tiger died in 2001 and we have lived off a fake asset bubble ever since and spent all the money we made.

This country, every country lives and dies on private sector industry and we have been slowly killing them off. Employment figures looked good for so long because we had massive construction bubble & massive increase in public sector employment.

We need to invest massively in R&D and universities and bring back fees. We have little to no indigenous industry in this country to fall back on. We rely completely on foreign investment and we have little today to attract US companies to Ireland.

Where does this leave us then IMO? I don't know but its going to be tough.

cronos

ongarite wrote: »

All again my opinion:
We are screwed and its all our own fault. There is no new industry to come into this country to magically fix is all up again. It was the tech sector in the 80s/90s, medical sector in 90s/00s.
Tech sector is dead and medical sector is rationalizing and cutting back on the big spends.

We got greedy, fat and cocky with our success and now its come back to haunt us. The real Celtic Tiger died in 2001 and we have lived off a fake asset bubble ever since and spent all the money we made.

This country, every country lives and dies on private sector industry and we have been slowly killing them off. Employment figures looked good for so long because we had massive construction bubble & massive increase in public sector employment.

We need to invest massively in R&D and universities and bring back fees. We have little to no indigenous industry in this country to fall back on. We rely completely on foreign investment and we have little today to attract US companies to Ireland.

Where does this leave us then IMO? I don't know but its going to be tough.

Im not against bringing back fees, although I am lucky enough to have graduated already. However I dont understand how people will be more able to pay for fees when the economy is in poor condition as their earnings will be reduced.

I dont think the Tech sector is dead in ireland either. It has recovered over the years since the bubble, yes its not as big as it was during the bubble...

And to be fair we must be able to attract some jobs in some sector. No point giving up and relying on Universities as they will take years to bring jobs that way.

ongarite

The Tech sector (electronics) is completely dead in this country. 3Com, Selectica, Flextronics, Motorola, Gateway, NEC, Lucent all gone. HP & Intel not in good shape in Ireland.
The IT sector has recovered since 2001 alright.

cronos

ongarite wrote: »

The Tech sector (electronics) is completely dead in this country. 3Com, Selectica, Flextronics, Motorola, Gateway, NEC, Lucent all gone. HP & Intel not in good shape in Ireland.
The IT sector has recovered since 2001 alright.

Ya I agree, I was thinking about IT not electronics or hardware production.

Schuhart

cronos wrote: »

How would it be possible to prevent Dell leaving Ireland (If they are thinking about it). The provide 5% of GNP, what can we do to keep them here?

The 5% figure does get cited a lot, but its doesn't seem to relate to reality. This has been discussed elsewhere. Basically, if Dell accounts for 5% of GNP (or 6% of GDP or any other statment that boils down to 'appreciable few percent of national output') it means that everyone else in the whole Mid West region is so unproductive that they might as well stay in bed tomorrow morning.

The Mid West has 8.5% of the national workforce, but only contributes 7.5% of national Gross Value Added (which is basically another measure of national output). You appreciate, if Dell's 4,000 employees really account for most of that 7.5% then the remaining 160,000 workers in Clare, Limerick and North Tipperary would really want to be getting the finger out.

I've a feeling (but I don't know) that the 5% figure might have to do with the notional value of Dell's exports, but you'll likely find that inflated value is balanced by the value of Dell-related imports.

Darragh29

ongarite wrote: »

All again my opinion:
We are screwed and its all our own fault. There is no new industry to come into this country to magically fix is all up again. It was the tech sector in the 80s/90s, medical sector in 90s/00s.
Tech sector is dead and medical sector is rationalizing and cutting back on the big spends.

We got greedy, fat and cocky with our success and now its come back to haunt us. The real Celtic Tiger died in 2001 and we have lived off a fake asset bubble ever since and spent all the money we made.

This country, every country lives and dies on private sector industry and we have been slowly killing them off. Employment figures looked good for so long because we had massive construction bubble & massive increase in public sector employment.

We need to invest massively in R&D and universities and bring back fees. We have little to no indigenous industry in this country to fall back on. We rely completely on foreign investment and we have little today to attract US companies to Ireland.

Where does this leave us then IMO? I don't know but its going to be tough.

Jasus this is an excellent description of where we are right now in Ireland. I think this must go back to our history of being run by a foreign government, but we seem to expect jobs to be provided here for us. We expect US Multinationals to come here and set up manufacturing facilities for us! I think we have lost sight of this, but these US multinational companies don't give a sh*te about you or me or any of us. They will go when we start costing too much, as we now are. I think we need to starting looking inwards for the solution and not to the US or Europe, we can make jobs ourselves and I think this is what the next thing is for us...

HashSlinging

I thought Dell were selling there PC and Laptop division, sort of like what IBM did a couple of years ago. Might not be that bad.

97i9y3941

i expect the poor will end up paying the fees regardless,like the grant system,the poor pay their tax to fund it but woundnt be entilted to it in the end,i think what persuaded dell to set up in here the first place isnt attractive anymore to them-the tax breaks

Nolanger

Irish universities should be teaching students how to start up their own future multinationals instead of working for foreign ones.

leeroybrown

HashSlinging wrote: »

I thought Dell were selling there PC and Laptop division, sort of like what IBM did a couple of years ago. Might not be that bad.

I can't see how that makes sense. By the looks of it their current consumer strategies appear to be based on moving back into indirect sales and marketing via high-street partners and offloading their factories as a going concern.

Dell's gross revenue is about $60BN per annum and a very large percentage of that comes from the desktop/laptop market. If they sold that division they'd practically be cutting the company in half. IBM had a much smaller percentage of the global desktop/laptop market and after selling it they still had a turnover of about $100BN per annum.

Fred83 wrote: »

i think what persuaded dell to set up in here the first place isnt attractive anymore to them-the tax breaks

Exactly. Once the IDA grant time limits run out I really don't see a reason to manufacture here, particularly as we begin to look increasingly less central in an EMEA market growing east.

Nolanger wrote: »

Irish universities should be teaching students how to start up their own future multinationals instead of working for foreign ones.

To a certain degree I agree. I'd argue that it's the quality of the education not the direction of the education in many cases. Irish Universities should be running better degree programmes that produce well educated and motivated graduates.