Steve Jobs took to the stage last week for the launch of the iPad, Apples latest product for the world market. This event dominated the news and media for months leading up to the launch and was the main news on the day of the launch. Apple now has a value of $180bn and it generates cash-flow of $10bn a year. It was the most admired company in the world in 2009 according to Fortune magazine. All of this value and profit was created by the ideas of two guys in a garage, who now employ 35,000 people.

What can we in Ireland learn from this?

How can we re-launch the Irish?

The value created by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak by starting a business in their garage is enough to pay off Ireland's national debt and sort out the Nama mess. That's not a bad result for one company started in 1976.

Ireland has the potential in its entrepreneurs to build businesses and create value that can far outweigh the burden of the property crash. I think that we have the ideas and the skill to build world-class technology enterprises.

This country's focus on property over the past 15 years has done untold damage to delay Ireland's entry into the real world of the global modern connected enterprises. This is the stage on which we need to play if we are to generate jobs and profits and build value.

Rather than fixing the old property game, we need to play the new technology game.

We have a state plan to create a knowledge economy, but I now work in the technology sector and I have never seen any real benefit from this great state support. The state will write a blank cheque for an Intel or a Dell, but if you are an Irish company, you will need to beg very hard to get any notice, never mind a cheque.

The government's strategy to attract multinationals through moderate wages and 12.5% corporation tax has worked to date. We now have a bank of trained, and experienced people to help build Irish companies. The US multinationals are not here to stay as we can see from Dell. We need to build large-scale Irish companies based here to counter the swings of the world economy and global capitalism.

A fundamental step in the creation of Apple was the investment of $250,000 by Mike Markkula. Who was this guy and where did he get his money? Markkula was a employee at Fairchild Semiconductor, which was the catalyst for the entire development of Silicon Valley. In today's Ireland, think of Markkula as an experienced worker in Intel or Microsoft. Our Fairchild Semiconductor in this tale is Intel.

It's simple. Markkula works for big company A and he gets wealthy on his salary and stock options. Rather than retiring and playing golf or buying apartments (as all the Irish seem to do), he meets up with two guys in a garage and takes a $250,000 punt in a new market, with a new company and no track record. His return for taking this risk was immense and the world's return has been Apple.

Why has this not happened in Ireland yet?

We certainly have the young talented people with the ideas and the energy to drive business. We have also have the ambition to grow these businesses and through the internet we have access to world markets. The world is flat and a small company from Ireland can become a global leader. So what goes wrong in Ireland?

The first breaking point for all Irish technology companies is capital. There is virtually no money in Ireland to start a technology company. This has not changed since the property collapse as there was no money for it during the boom either.

The Irish have a warped sense of risk. They seem to view taking a punt on an apartment for €500,000 or a site for €50m as low risk, and conversely they view investing in a real technology business seeking to build worldwide customers as high risk.

I was able to arrange and borrow hundreds of millions of euro for various property projects yet when I sought investment in real technology businesses, all but a visionary few declined.

There are plenty of people with large deposit accounts and pension funds in Bank of Ireland and AIB. Let's use this capital in the building and creating of real Irish businesses. Let's all become more like Mike Markkula and take a calculated risk. The rewards individually and as a nation will be enormous. We will find an Irish Steve Jobs and we will also uncover many thousands of entrepreneurs and companies to rebuild the country. On the back of the Apple II computer, Visicalc was launched in 1979 and this set of the worldwide trend in spreadsheet software. You can be sure that the current losses by the banks are being calculated on this simple piece of world-changing software that was inspired by Steve Jobs at Apple

Simon Kelly is a former property developer. The views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the Sunday Tribune