By Declan O’Kelly

Marina Donohoe has been with Enterprise Ireland since the early 1990s. She moved to the U.S. in 1998, initially to Silicon Valley, where she established a new office in California for Enterprise Ireland, which is a government agency.

With its thirteen national and 33 international offices, Enterprise Ireland’s primary focus has been on helping Irish companies stay competitive in the global market. It offers Irish businesses a resource to search out new markets, increase exports and increase profitability.

Donohoe, a Trinity College graduate, was appointed Enterprise Ireland’s Director Americas in 2002 and relocated to New York City. In her time with the agency, Ireland has experienced unprecedented economic growth, fueled in large part by Enterprise Ireland and its sister agency The Industrial Development Authority, which works to attract new business to Ireland.

Ireland’s economic gain is also good news for the United States. Irish companies now have over 400 offices in the United States, with a presence in 35 states, and employ over 65,000 with total investment of over $21 billion.

“Ireland has been the fortunate recipient of a lot of foreign direct investment. Now there is an opportunity in Ireland to provide a mechanism for American and Irish-owned entities to form strong partnership links and develop business ideas in the country,” Donohoe asserts.

In other words, Enterprise Ireland is looking to the future. While continuing to help Irish companies stay competitive in the U.S. and global market, it is turning its attention to funding start-ups and helping entrepreneurs, be they Irish or American, develop new, profitable businesses in Ireland.

In particular, Enterprise Ireland is interested in start-ups that have high potential. By high potential, Enterprise Ireland means that the project is based on technological innovation, is likely to achieve significant growth in three years, and is export oriented and led by people equally adept at managing the business and technological aspects of a company.

Ireland, which just ten years ago depended almost wholly on investment from foreign companies, now has one of the highest start-up percentages in Europe, and in 2004 alone, 65 new start-ups were supported by Enterprise Ireland.

Indeed, the area of attracting high-potential start-ups has become so important that Enterprise Ireland has dedicated a full-time staff member, Jonathan Ryan, to work solely on the American market, selling Ireland as a place to start a company.

“Up until recently it was all about identifying talent and bringing people back to work for companies in Ireland. Last year we decided it’s not just about talent, it’s about bringing people back to Ireland to set up companies,” said Ryan, who took part in the FÁS Jobs Ireland Fair in New York in October.

“With Jonathan in the role on a full-time basis, we will be able to reach out to both the Irish-American community and the American community to show what Ireland can do for start-ups,” says Donohoe.

MBA students are a key target demographic, as individuals at this level are expected to have ideas and concepts that could be developed in Ireland. Last year Enterprise Ireland’s Boston office made a presentation to the Executive MBA class in Northwestern University, and as a result a new medical device company was set up in Ireland, with core funding provided by Enterprise Ireland.

“Ireland has a very favorable tax structure [corporate tax is 12.5 percent compared to, for example, Canada where it is over 30 percent]. It has very credible and intelligent output at third level education, and it has a very strong pro-business environment,” Donohoe says, explaining what sets Ireland apart as a location to realize entrepreneurial dreams.

“The country has built up an extremely strong credibility in the life-science software and services sector. Entrepreneurs would not be alone when coming to do business in Ireland, as they will be joining a group of their peers that are developing and growing their companies,” she adds.

One of several successful start-up stories is Proxy Biomedical, which is located at the Science and Technology Engineering Centre at National University of Ireland, Galway.

The company, founded in 2002, develops advanced soft-tissue implants and minimally invasive delivery instrumentation using state-of-the-art materials and processes. Proxy Biomedical has 14 highly trained staff, is about 95 percent export driven, and has signed a strategic alliance agreement with Boston Scientific Corporation for global distribution of women’s health implants.

“I first heard about Enterprise Ireland in New York City at a medical device show,” says Proxy Biomedical managing director, Peter Gingras, originally from Concord, Massachusetts.

“They had a booth set up and were able to give me all the information I needed,” When the time was right, Gingras met with Enterprise Ireland officials at the Boston office on Federal Street, and their negotiations led him to start his business in the West of Ireland.

“When you are starting out, the most valuable support is financial support. Enterprise Ireland provided some initial seed funding for business planning purposes and were able to increase its level of support once we had an initial round of funding for the company,” says Gingras, who spends time between Ireland and the U.S. and hopes to become more involved in transitioning companies and projects to Ireland.

Donohoe sums up her role and the role of her staff by saying,

“Enterprise Ireland’s strategies to transform Irish industry are all about supporting start-ups with financial packages for companies in that area, be it research and development or feasibility studies. Ireland is a strong value proposition for business, and we are all about trying to drive the entrepreneurial spirit in Irish industry.”