After a week of job losses around the State, the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, announced yesterday that Dublin was to get 900 new jobs as part of a £45.5 million (€57.8 million) investment backed by IDA Ireland.
The companies creating the jobs are Ascend Communications, which supplies products to Internet service providers, based in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin and Quintiles, which provides services to the pharmaceutical industry, based at the East Point Business Park. It is estimated about 95 per cent of the jobs will be for graduates.
Ms Harney said the investments showed the Republic continued to be a significant location for multinationals looking to expand their operations.
She said while this week had seen many "painful" job losses, "we are creating a lot more jobs than we are losing". She added that the economy was currently creating an average of 1,000 jobs - net - a week.
Mr Martin Cronin, executive director of the IDA, said unlike Germany and some other EU states, the Republic was a net gainer in employment at present. He said the recent job losses were a "fact of life" and resulted from developments in the international economy.
Pharmaceuticals and electronics are two of the fastest-growing areas for jobs in the Republic at present. Last year, IDA-backed projects in the electronics sector created 7,000 jobs, almost half of all jobs created. Last year IDA-backed projects in the pharmaceutical sector created 1,740 jobs.
Ms Harney said both sectors had found Dublin to be "a prime location for investment and expansion". She rejected the accusation that the Government and the IDA were providing sufficient jobs for Dublin, but not enough elsewhere in the State.
"Over 70 per cent of the job announcements this Government has made have been for locations outside Dublin," she said.
She said recent job losses, including Avon Arlington in Portarlington, Co Laois, were mainly in "low added-value sectors" of the economy. She said the solution to this was to move up "the value-added chain".
As reported in The Irish Times in January, Ascend Communications, which recently acquired Stratus Computer, is turning its Blanchardstown facility into a European centre for manufacturing, shared services and customer and technical support.
From the centre, Ascend will provide products and systems to the telecommunications industry. The total investment comes to £41.3 million and 580 jobs are being created. Its existing 110,000 sq ft plant will double in size as a result of the investment.
Ascend, based in Alamed, California, had a turnover last year of $1.4 billion (€1.3 billion) with net income of $247 million. Its products include switches, routers and network access tools. The products are used to access the Internet, link branch offices and dial up a central computer from home or a field office. Among the company's customers are AT & T, Bell Atlantic, MCI/WorldCom, British Telecom, France Telekon and Deutsche Telecom.
Quintiles, a US-owned company, will double the size of its facility in the East Point Business Park, recruiting 320 staff over the next four years on the back of a £4.25 million investment. This is the company's third expansion since it was established here in 1990 and it currently employs 310 people.
It provides a range of services related to clinical trials of new drugs being developed by pharmaceutical companies. These companies outsource some of the trials to Quintiles, which tries to accelerate product development.
At yesterday's announcement, Ms Harney, Dr Marie Kenny, managing director of Quintiles and Mr Eoin O'Driscoll, head of Ascend Ireland, said rising wage levels would not affect the competitiveness of the companies.
Dr Kenny said while there was "pressure on wages", Quintiles would use the latest technology to improve productivity.
Ms Harney agreed and said that the Republic "could justify its wage levels" if it used new technology to step up production.
