Virgin Express is to create 300 new jobs in Shannon over the next three years, the chairman of the Virgin Group, Mr Richard Branson, announced in Dublin yesterday.

Mr Branson was giving details of the airline's new Shannon-London Stansted route which begins operating from December 18.

Mr Branson said the airline's arrival in the Republic will create new jobs for cabin crew, pilots and technical support. The remainder of the jobs will be in Virgin's reservation centre at Shannon, which will recruit multilingual staff. He said 40 staff are being hired immediately.

The reservation centre will initially handle bookings from Ireland, Britain and Spain, but in time other language facilities will be offered.

Mr Branson also said the company would be interested in flying routes from Dublin airport if Ryanair decides to scale down its operations there.

"I agree with Ryanair's campaign to get airport charges down, but if they decide to pull out of Dublin airport we would be happy to step into their shoes," said Mr Branson. He added that he regarded Aer Rianta's charges at Shannon to be "good value".

Mr Branson said in addition to the Shannon-London Stansted route, Virgin Express is planning a charter service from Shannon to continental European destinations.

He said the airline expects to carry 100,000 passengers next year who will be saving £5 million by availing of new low fares. The twice-daily flights will cost £59 return, although a cheaper introductory fare will operate for a short period.

He said the prices compared favourably with the other carriers operating from Shannon, like Aer Lingus and AB Airlines. He said the company choose Shannon because he claimed it does not currently have a low-fare operator and because of "the case made by Irish government ministers".

"The country is obviously doing very well economically and your ministers have used every trick in the book to sell the country to outside companies," said Mr Branson.

Mr James E Swigart, president and chief executive officer of Virgin Express, said workers in the area of Shannon have "excellent language skills" which would be useful for expanding the reservations centre. "We have decided to go into Shannon because we see it growing at a serious rate in coming years, you just have to look at how companies like Dell have expanded in the region in recent years," he said.

When asked would the company move its European hub from Brussels to Shannon, Mr Swigart said "we will just have to wait and see".