A further 700 jobs are earmarked for Blanchardstown in north-west Dublin as a result of the Xerox announcement, underlining the importance of the two IDA industrial estates to the development of the region.
Xerox will establish manufacturing, shared services and European customer support services at Blanchardstown, and will set up a customer financing and treasury management office in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC).
At the Ballycoolin Business Park, Xerox will add its name to 3 Com's computer components factory, and to IBM's customer support service centre, which will employ almost 3,000 people by 2001.
The software company, Symantec, AMP Packaging and Creative Labs multi-media products are also at Ballycoolin.
Nearby, at the Blanchardstown Industrial Park, Xerox's rival, Hewlett Packard, has retained 260 staff after relocating its inkjet-printer manufacturing to Leixlip.
But another seven international companies are established in that park, including Thermo King, Stratus Computer and Fujitsu Isotec.
The Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Ms Harney, said yesterday that a skills evaluation study had been carried out in Dublin and Dundalk for the project "to ensure that a sufficient number of people with the right skills would be available".
Ms Harney said: "Ireland was selected as one of the strategic centres for the future of Xerox in Europe because we were able to demonstrate clear competitive advantage in many of the business areas under review." The downside of the equation, however, is that 4,000 jobs are to be lost at Xerox's various centres in Britain, Holland and France.
The west of Dublin has developed rapidly as an industrial centre in recent years, helped to a large extent by a developing roads infrastructure. The network formed by the M50 around that side of the city, as well as improved road links to the west, have meant factories locating to the west of the city have easy access to Dublin Port and the airport.
This development has also made it easier for employees to travel longer distances to work, and plants such as the giant Intel facility in Leixlip attract staff from a wide catchment area.