Ronan Harris, the Managing Director of Google here in Ireland, spoke to Bobby Kerr on Down To Business this morning about Shine a Light, a campaign from Focus Ireland that aims to highlight the continuing difficulties with homelessness here in Ireland.
As part of the campaign, Bobby Kerr and Google Ireland's Ronan Harris, will take part in the annual Business Leader sleepout October 16th in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin and in Munster in Cork’s historic city Gaol.
Speaking about the base that Google has here in Ireland, Harris revealed that the constant innovation going on here is having an impact globally. "The Irish operation is very successful within the Google umbrella, it continues to grow. There's lots of innovation going on down in Barrow Street that's driving both our products and our customers and services both in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and globally".
As the largest operation that the company has outside of the United States, Google Ireland is always pushing the boundaries and constantly looking to be first to market in the drive to stay ahead of their competitors, and part of that is working with startups both here and in Europe in general, to shape where the future is headed.
As the largest acquirer of startups in Europe, Harris stated that supporting great ideas at every stage in the process keeps Google at the forefront of innovation:
"We've got a team down in Barrow Street who do a lot of work together with the startup community. We have been a key supporter of the new office of the Commissioner for start ups with Niamh Bushnell [...] we do a lot of work to support start ups in their various stages, so we have several programmes that we run down in Barrow Street which are outreach programmes where we invite entrepreneurs in, we give them access to expertise and technology, and try and support them in any way we can".
You can listen to the full interview here, which contains more information about how you and your company can get involved in Focus Ireland's Shine A Light campaign.
Newstalk is proud to have been announced as the official media partner for Shine A Light Night.
Editor-in-Chief, Garrett Harte, says he is delighted that the station can support this unique event, "this is a real opportunity for corporate Ireland to make an impact on homelessness in Ireland."
"We have been supporting Shine A Light Night since its inception in 2012 and we are delighted to be Focus Ireland’s Media Partner for this year’s event. We hope our listeners will get behind this great initiative."
