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Trinity Today The right connection
The Right
Connection Following the success of Taxback.com, Terry Clune wants to get the Irish diaspora involved in the future success of Ireland, writes Una Reddington B.A. (2001).
T
erry Clune B.A., M.A. (1996) is on a mission to bring much-needed foreign investment and jobs to Ireland and his company, ConnectIreland, aims to achieve this by tapping into one of the world’s largest social networks – the Irish diaspora. The premise is simple but effective: Clune wants Irish people, at home and abroad, to become ‘connectors’ and tip ConnectIreland off if they hear about any company that is thinking about expanding into Europe. Clune’s team will then engage with the company to convince them to choose Ireland as their new location and, if this results in any jobs being created here, the connector will receive a government reward of up to b150,000. “We simply need our global Irish family, diaspora and people who have an interest in or love of Ireland to keep their ears open. The hardest part is finding the leads,” Clune tells Trinity Today.
Power of a Pitch Recently a man let ConnectIreland know about some US executives who were visiting Portlaoise en route to the Czech Republic to investigate a potential site for a factory. “They played 18 holes of golf and in the bar later that night they had a few pints and started talking to a guy who was sitting beside them,” says Clune. The guy then called ConnectIreland and tipped them
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off. “We met them in Dublin airport and gave them an extensive pitch on Ireland resulting in 50 jobs in Portarlington instead of Prague.” Anyone can be a ‘connector’ and there are currently 8,000 registered with ConnectIreland. “Once the connection is made, the sales pitch often writes itself,” Clune says. “Of 25 of the top biotechnology companies in the world 17 of them have operations in Ireland. So that’s our sales pitch – just look at who’s here already and that is proof that Ireland is a great place for business. Of the five busiest websites in the world four of the top five have their European operations in Ireland.” At a conference in Kilkenny in 2011 Clune asked the audience if anybody had any connections in America. One lady replied that she had a connection to the founding members of Coca Cola. Kilkenny also has direct connections to the architect of the White House while the county is also the birthplace of the grandfather of Walt Disney. “These are connections that any of the top businessmen in the room would have given their right arm for,” says Clune.
Taxback.com Clune’s confidence in making partnerships comes from the success of another company he founded, Taxback.com. That company has its origins from his time at Trinity during which he
We simply need our global Irish family, diaspora and people who have an interest in or love of Ireland to keep their ears open
went to Germany for a summer. The manager of a factory he worked in liked his work ethic as well as that of his fellow Irish workers so Clune offered to recruit more Irish workers for the following summer. He advertised in TCD and UCD and recruited 110 students. For a fee of £200 he set them up with accommodation and a job. One hundred of them started on the Monday following their arrival as planned. However, for the first week there were no jobs for 10 of the students so Clune set them up with an alternative job marching with a giant cross in the
10/10/2013 09:58:45