The EU's internal market commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, has said that recent job losses at US companies in Ireland highlight the need to constantly review competitiveness and inward investment strategies.

"Small countries like Ireland - and large countries too - should constantly be evaluating and reassessing their positions in all kinds of fields. . .You are constantly evaluating the changes that are taking place around you, keeping your unit costs in line with your competitors and doing things better," he said.

Mr McCreevy noted, however, that Ireland's unemployment rate remained the lowest in the EU and that, in the past, job losses have been offset by new job created.

The commissioner was speaking in Washington where he met Paul Atkins, the US securities and exchange commissioner responsible for external relations. The two men agreed to hold a transatlantic summit on widening the financial services market between the US and the EU when they jointly address the Finance Dublin annual conference in Dublin Castle later this month.

Mr Atkins said their joint appearance would reject the notion that the economies of the two continents are inherently at odds with one another.

"Instead, it reflects a realisation that people everywhere benefit from greater transatlantic economic integration," he said.