The Engineees Ireland Annual Conference takes place in Kilkenny later today.
President Michael D Higgins will give the opening address at Hotel Kilkenny, for a conference which is this year titled "Engineering Long Term Growth".
Engineers Ireland represents 23,000 members across all disciplines in the engineering profession in Ireland.
Registrar with Engineers Ireland Damien Owens told Beat News long-term development will be a major discussion point at the event.
"We need to take a very long term perspective to solve some of the infrastructure problems and challenges that we're going to face in the next number of years. If you look at topics like flooding or energy distribution around the country - they're long term projects that we need to make life more attractive for our citizens but also to encourage industrial growth."
He also says these discussions need to translate to growth in the South East.
"We have Ann Marie Tierney Le Rous, IDA Regional Manager for the South East speaking [at the event] because all these initiatives ultimately have to translate into jobs. We would work strongly with IT Carlow and WIT to translate a lot of the technological developments into real jobs and real projects that will benefit the community".
