A substantial new jobs package for the Waterford region has been announced by the optical multinational, Bausch & Lomb, which has outlined details of a major expansion of its contact lenses manufacturing operation in the city.

In a £43 million investment programme agreed with the IDA, the company is to double the size of its contact lenses plant and increase employment by 650 over the next three years.

The company's workforce at its two production plants in Waterford will grow to almost 1,700

when construction of new buildings is completed on a 25-acre site adjoining its existing facility at the IDA industrial park on the Cork Road.

The expansion will make Bausch & Lomb the largest employer in Waterford, where it began production of soft contact lenses in 1980 and established a second plant to produce Ray Ban sunglasses two years later.

The company's plans for growth in Waterford have been well signalled in frequent reports over recent months. Announcing the details yesterday, the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, said the project had been won for Waterford against very tough competition, particularly from the company's other locations worldwide.

A recruitment build-up will begin immediately with advertisements for people of Leaving Certificate standard and for a number of technical graduates with engineering experience.

In keeping with IDA policy, Ms Harney declined to specify the scale of the IDA grant aid for the expansion.

However, Dr Tom Lance, vice-president in charge of global operations for Bausch & Lomb, said that the package agreed had been a determining factor in the choice of Waterford for the expansion.

The company employs 13,000 workers at 16 locations worldwide and Waterford is one of four of these deemed as key strategic facilities. Its payroll locally amounts to £18 million annually and to date it has received IDA grant support totalling £6 million, he said.

Mr James Kennedy, Bausch & Lomb vice-president of European Operations, said that as part of the new project a joint task force from Waterford and the company's Rochester, New York, headquarters had been established to pool skills and resources and optimise results in research and development.

He noted that the expansion would place extra demands on the infrastructure of Waterford and the surrounding region.

The local transport infrastructure, including the road network and the regional airport, needed urgent development and he suggested the Government should consider "more up-front investment" in these areas.

The building phase of the expansion will begin as soon as the planning process is completed, and will cost £11 million. The existing contact lenses plant will be extended by almost 90,000 sq ft by the end of next year.

Ms Harney said regional development was a priority and a major focus of IDA work was on the development of existing companies. In Waterford a 25,000 sq ft high-tech advance factory building has been constructed on the IDA industrial park and there are plans for three more buildings, including the construction shortly of a 20,000 sq ft office development.

The IDA is also in the process of providing a Technology and Business Park on a 77-acre site on the Cork Road and is promoting industrial development on over 200 acres of land at Belview.