Olive for Education, the post-primary school technology division of Dublin-headquartered Olive Group, has opened a National Service and Support Centre at Carrick-on-Shannon Business Campus, Co. Leitrim, centralising device deployment, repairs, cloud provisioning, logistics and digital learning support for post-primary schools nationwide; the investment quantum is not disclosed.

Olive Group is a Dublin-headquartered edtech and workforce learning company founded in 2006 by Brendan Kavanagh, employing approximately 500 to 600 people across 12 countries. Olive for Education focuses on the Irish post-primary sector through device supply, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace management, and its Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Centre providing classroom integration support. 

The Carrick-on-Shannon facility is positioned as Ireland's largest dedicated post-primary IT service and support operation, staffed by specialists in school device management, repair logistics and education technology.

The structural driver is the Irish post-primary sector's accelerating adoption of one-to-one device programmes without commensurate support infrastructure. The Department of Education's Digital Strategy for Schools has progressively expanded device grants at post-primary level, with schools increasingly operating Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace environments at scale. 

The support burden — device provisioning, cloud configuration, ongoing repair turnaround, licensing management and teacher digital capability development, is beyond the capacity of school IT staff or general IT retail channels to deliver at consistent national standards. Centralising these functions in a single national facility removes geographical inconsistency and creates a predictable service level regardless of school location.

The Technology Enhanced Learning Centre embedded within the facility is the strategically differentiated element. Device deployment and repair are commoditisable services; teacher-facing digital learning integration support, delivered by education specialists rather than IT technicians, creates a stickier customer relationship. Schools that integrate Olive's TEL expertise into curriculum planning and professional development are less likely to switch providers than those using Olive purely for hardware logistics.

For the sector, Olive's national service centre signals that the Irish post-primary edtech market has reached sufficient scale to justify dedicated operational infrastructure, a milestone that will attract competitive responses from UK and European edtech managed service providers currently absent from the Irish market.

Source: thinkbusiness.ie / oliveforeducation.ie / tracxn.com / olivegroup.io