IDA Ireland's chief executive has warned against pessimism and panic despite the global economic slowdown. After the German-Irish Chamber of Industry and Commerce business lunch, Mr Sean Dorgan said: "We've never been as well positioned in terms of the companies we have, the rate of unemployment, the strength of public finances and the fact we have created a lot of advantages over the past 10 years.

"We are still creating new ones, like what we're doing with Science Foundation Ireland and what went into broadband over the past two to three years. All of those are standing to us now."

Mr Dorgan does not foresee huge rises in unemployment and emigration, reminiscent of the early 1980s.

"We weren't competitive in the 1980s; now we're strongly competitive," he said.

But in future, Ireland would have to compete on quality rather than just on cost, Mr Dorgan said. "It's being competitive on a whole range of quality factors rather than pure cost," he said.

"Lots of countries can have a good educated people. They can have low tax if they want to go for that, so you've got to be the best on a whole span of things."

He added that it was necessary to continue to invest in the State's infrastructure.

The terrorist attacks on the United States had had no immediate impact on investment decisions by US multinationals here, Mr Dorgan said.

"There has been an obvious slowdown right throughout the year, partly because of the slowdown in the information, communications and technology sector. We haven't noticed anything discernible after September 11th, other than no new decisions having been made either way, positive or negative," he said.

IDA Ireland has not had to re-evaluate its targets for the year, said Mr Dorgan, but he conceded that some longer-term projects might be stretched out over an extra year in terms of delivery.