AmCham Hosts 2025 Southern Region Conference on Innovation, Talent and Cost Competitiveness
AmCham Hosts 2025 Southern Region Conference on Innovation, Talent and Cost Competitiveness
AmCham hosted its 2025 Southern Region Conference this week, with panel discussions on infrastructure and innovation and on talent and cost competitiveness.
The Conference, which was sponsored by Zurich, featured a fantastic line-up of speakers, who outlined the key priorities for business in the region, including skills development, enhancing Ireland’s research landscape, and the adoption of digital technology.
Speaking on a panel discussion on enhancing competitiveness, Geraldine Cregan Vice president, Site Lead at BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. said: "when you look at Ireland in general, it’s our innovation and our collaboration, that culture, that really stands out”.
She also spoke about the strength of Ireland’s talent pool “our greatest national resource is our talent”.
Geraldine highlighted the importance of partnerships with universities for supporting this talent, but also noted the success that BioMarin has seen, by expanding their non-traditional learning offering – with the company expanding their apprenticeship model to non-traditional areas such as automation and quality control – and expanding internships to areas including BIS, commerce and finance, which she said will be important in addressing skills gaps.
Speaking on the same panel, Mark Bowers, Corporate Market Lead, Zurich Life, noted that with the current transport infrastructure “travel from Cork city takes 30-40 percent longer, than travel from any other city” and as a result, companies offering Cork working hours, with flexible arrangements can be really important in terms of maintaining competitiveness for employees.
In his keynote address at the Conference, John O’Halloran, President, University College Cork, said that with an evolving “A.I., automation, digital, and innovation landscape”, research is being built into all parts of UCC's curriculum to support the needs of industry and society, with industry-academia partnerships providing research opportunities, interdisciplinary knowledge and real-world placements and applications.
He said that an estimated “170m jobs are projected to be created and 92m will be displaced” as a result of A.I. and emerging technologies and noted that this is an opportunity for us to look “at the skills that we need to equip our graduates” with, to ensure they are best placed to meet future skills needs and support Ireland’s ambition to be a leader in digital and A.I.
On a panel discussion on infrastructure and innovation, Matt Canty, Process Engineering Manager, Meta, put forward a strong argument for supporting Ireland’s research, innovation and start-up landscape, by replicating a space like Station F in Paris, that would allow all start-ups in the region to exist under the one roof, access support from multinational companies, and focus on their innovation. He added that “understanding and upskilling in A.I. will bring us value and will bring more investment”.