- David Walsh of Netwatch.
Irish justice minister Alan Shatter might want to consider hooking his house up to Netwatch.
The minister's Dublin home was recently broken into and to date four arrests have been made by gardai in the matter.
The house was empty at the time, the minister being in Australia and New Zealand for St. Patrick's Day events. His wife and daughter were also out of the country.
The incident brought a knowing nod from David Walsh, who was in New York for St. Patrick's Day and was at the New York Stock Exchange when Taoiseach Enda Kenny rang the opening bell on March 19.
Walsh reckons that his high-tech Netwatch security system would have stopped the intruders cold in their tracks.
The system, he said, would have resulted in video footage of any intruder, or intruders, alerting security soft wear and ultimately thwarting the break-in.
Though based in Ireland, where it currently employs about 100 people, Netwatch recently set up an office in Boston.
The Boston office serves as the Carlow-based Netwatch's U.S. headquarters and will also serve as a springboard for the company as it expands its operations in North America.
Netwatch monitors 20,000 video cameras for about 2,000 clients worldwide, and, according to a Boston Globe report, has contracts with several customers in the Boston area, including the Massachusetts Port Authority.
The company currently employs just a handful of people at its temporary Medford office.
"But we hope to expand to 50 people in the near future," Walsh told the Echo.
Longer term he expects to hire as many as 100 people over the next three years, and invest $4 million in its U.S. expansion.
Walsh, the company's chief executive, said he chose Boston as a U.S. base because of the strong cultural link between the city and Ireland, and because of the influence of former Boston Police commissioner, Kathleen O'Toole, who serves on the company's board.
Walsh and company co-founder, Niall Kelly, began the company a decade ago after a friend was viciously attacked by intruders at his place of business, this despite his having a security system.
They determined that there had to be a security system efficient enough to ensure that an individual would never again experience such an attack. Now, 10 years later, Netwatch has customers across four continents and says that it has successfully prevented over 35,000 crimes in progress.
