The joke is on the Irish youth

Sir — One thing is for certain about Dan O’Brien; he is a true believer (‘The hopes and fears around artificial intelligence’, Business, Sunday Independent, August 14). Although he was careful not to mention the “knowledge economy”, he did manage to slip in the associated zippy sound bites “re-skilling” and “life-long learning”.

I am intimately familiar with such pseudo-intellectual nonsense having earned a worthless business studies with a specialisation in HR degree from DCU in 2007. Spilling into the workforce brimming with academic qualifications as a “depression” gripped the land. Careers were and still are in short supply. So I bounded from temporary position to temporary position, occupying no less than 17 different jobs. Dan would probably put a positive spin on all this job hopping. Obviously he doesn’t put any stock in the 10,000-hour rule to develop a level of expertise. He probably chalks this up as “acceleration in the pace of change”. Exploitative schemes like “JobBridge” and unpaid “internships” are what I assume he characterised as “Government programmes to help those who lose their jobs get back to work”; really Dan?

I left Ireland for similar reasons to most. I have my own ideas and objectives that were doomed to go unfulfilled. The truth is Ireland is going backwards not forwards. Yes, the school leavers of today will enter third level in record numbers. By the time they graduate as highly-skilled young adults the “tax haven” we call home will still be unable to provide the calibre of career they desire, so they will go elsewhere.

Their future is the past, exports have always been strong — sure, we exported food during the famine. Don’t be so down on the Celtic Tiger, the beast that was, after all, it protected us from being the exports. Michael Coffey Almeria, Spain