People in Business

Liam Bluett – General Manager SCCUL Enterprise

The Pope’s visit to Galway might not have happened at all, if the finance gurus in Northern Telecom’s Canadian head office had their way.

‘The company counted its stocks of parts in every location around the world on the last weekend of September each year,’ explains Liam Bluett who worked in the finance department in Galway at the time

‘As it was entirely a manual process, this required a lot of staff to work over the whole weekend but in 1979 the Pope’s visit to Ballybrit meant access to our plant in Mervue would be difficult if not impossible.

‘We explained this to the guys in Ontario who responded by asking us if the Pope’s visit could be postponed or cancelled.

‘They didn’t see it as a big deal, but we managed to come up with a compromise which achieved what they wanted and allowed Pope John Paul make his famous speech to the young people of Ireland.

Liam joined Northern Telecom in 1978 having spent several years in the British Merchant Navy before qualifying as an accountant in the mid 1970’s.

In 1978 industrial life in Galway was dominated by Digital, Crown, Thermo King and NT.

‘It was a very friendly and relatively young city,’ says Liam, ‘and on Thursday nights the workers poured into town from Mervue and Ballybrit and the place would be hopping.

They only made telephone sets in Mervue then but in 1979 a technology transfer group was set up which allowed the site develop engineering and ultimately product development capabilities of its own during the early 1980’s.

Within a decade the Galway site was well established as a European Centre of Excellence for manufacturing, distribution, customer service, product development and R&D.

This period also coincided with the computerisation of the finance function globally which allowed the department in Galway take on additional responsibilities for European markets.

‘We were closer to these markets and their time zones than the folks in Canada and could be more effective,’ says Liam.

‘This created more jobs in Galway and opportunities for staff to relocate to other Nortel sites.

‘I wasn’t interested in further travel but I was very interested in helping people to develop their careers and get overseas experience if they wanted.

This was very much the culture of Nortel at the time and the company funded an MBA for Liam which encouraged him to develop stronger links with the community.

From the early 1990’s the company was a major sponsor of Galway Arts Festival and many other community initiatives. Liam would have been the driving force behind the establishment of these strong cultural ties.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.