TRAINING provider People 1st has unveiled major plans to expand its operations across Ireland.
The company is already a leading trainer in Northern Ireland but wants to replicate that success in the Republic.
Company director Ronan Heenan told the Irish News the firm has a three to five year plan for a significant expansion south of the border.
The business, which has six offices across the north, took its first steps into the Republic at the end of last year.
It already has three offices across Co Donegal in Letterkenny, Buncrana and Dungloe - but Mr Heenan said that is just the beginning.
The firm works mainly in the public sector - around 80 per cent of its projects are for the government - and provides training for the unemployed or young people.
"One of our major programmes in the north is the Steps to Success which helps train people to get back to work.
"The government in the south has looked at what is going on in the north and the UK and seen it is a success so wanted to replicate that."
People 1st was invited to be part of the Irish government's Job Path scheme and as a result is involved in the training of around 22,000 unemployed in Co Donegal.
"It has happened very fast, we knew it was happening last August and then had until November to set up three offices," said Mr Heenan.
"We now have 22 staff in the south. It has been a major investment for us."
But Mr Heenan said there are much bigger things ahead for the firm.
"We've sat down and done a business plan for where we want to be in the next one, three, five years," he said.
"We see a lot of opportunities in the south especially in training for childcare and domiciliary care for the elderly."
In order to facilitate its all-Ireland plans, People 1st recently signed a deal with a new communications partner eir Business NI.
Mr Heenan said the services it will provide "is critical to us so we can concentrate on providing a premium client service across the island of Ireland".
"The new high-bandwidth network underpins the applications we use and ensures our staff have access to the information they need and can share it securely across the organisation," he said.
"The managed solution also gives us the added reassurance that a team of experts from eir Business NI will monitor the availability and performance of the network for us."
Eir Business NI sales and marketing director Matt McCloskey added: "The network we designed for People 1st is managed from our network operations centre in Belfast. Not only do we monitor its availability but also its performance so that it's always running at its peak.
"This is so important for an organisation like People 1st to ensure they don't experience any downtime."
