Monday, September 30, 2013

CARLOW rolled out the red carpet for taoiseach Enda Kenny recently, with new jobs and future development giving a buoyant feel to the visit.

First stop was Enterprise House on the O’Brien Road – “the hub of enterprise in Co Carlow” – to announce the creation of 12 new full-time jobs at a local start-up company already making waves across the globe.

Maven TM, set up by Mark Craddock, provides telemarketing and lead generation services from its base at Enterprise House. After winning contracts with multi-million companies such as Vodafone Ireland, the Carlow start-up will now expand from 18 to 30 employees over the next 12 months.

The taoiseach met Carlow County Enterprise Board CEO Kieran Comerford and several Carlow entrepreneurs, remarking that Carlow was a “leading example of a small county quietly doing its thing”.

Mr Comerford described Enterprise House as “the hub of enterprise in Co Carlow”, adding that the county is “a great place to do business, with a collective willingness, a commitment and a spirit to make a difference”.

Mr Craddock spoke of founding Maven YM in 2011 following a start-your-own-business course organised by CCEB. With a highly skilled sales and marketing team, the company has developed to attract a client base of 80 technology clients across Europe and America, winning contracts and beating companies from California to New York and Paris to Berlin.

“Not bad for a small company in a small county in Carlow,” smiled Mr Craddock.

The taoiseach stated that companies like Maven TM are injecting confidence back into the local economy, adding there was “so much we can do if we set our minds to it”.

Mr Kenny indicated that the government had experienced “an economic cliff, the worse the country faced since the foundation of the state”, but with planning, strategy and some hard decisions, things had improved … “we have come a long way and there is still some way to go,” he said.

Referring to the upcoming budget, he warned this would be the hardest of the three remaining budgets of this current government but was confident the country had turned a corner.

Several presentation were made to the taoiseach to mark his visit to Enterprise House, including gifts from two new Carlow companies – a tin whistle sculpture from James Cummins of James Dominic Music and products from the Eye Spoon Company, owned by Dr Michael Gallagher and Paula Walshe. A hamper of Carlow products was also presented to the taoiseach.

The taoiseach then continued his visit to Carlow at Whitelite, also on O’Brien Road, an engineering firm specialising in future energy systems, modular data centres and electrical and telecom plant rooms.

He continued his whistle-stop tour at IT Carlow for the official naming of the new research, development and innovation centre on campus.

The centre will provide a multi-million euro research and innovation nucleus for the south-east region. Named the Dargan Carlow after Carlow-born engineer William Dargan, the facility will, by 2016, host over 100 post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers developing new technologies and commercial innovations.

An taoiseach Enda Kenny spoke of the opportunities the new Dargan Centre will bring to the institute and the wider community and how the new centre, and those who work in it, will have the capacity to impact and influence change.

“It is not just another new building on campus. It is an essential vehicle for our most important resource – our intellectual talent – and it has been designed to help that talent grow, thrive and spread for the ultimate benefit of our economy and society,” said Dr Patricia Mulcahy, Institute of Technology Carlow president.