substantial export growth last year, increasing their overseas sales by 14.5 per cent to €10.97 billion. Total Enterprise Ireland client sales were €23.71 billion, up 12.1 per cent. The outcome of this growth was a record increase of 16,950 new jobs, with a net jobs gain of 6,728 jobs, also a record high.

And the public sector is also competing for candidates in the jobs market. Health boards, government departments, and semi-state bodies are all offering attractive packages of salary, job security, good promotional prospects, and family-friendly working policies such as job-sharing, part-time working, and term time breaks for parents. Indeed, Irish Rail is currently in the process of establishing a career development centre for its staff.

"We are constantly recruiting electrical engineers, craft workers, fitters, electricians, vehicle repair specialists and so on," says Sean Cooke, human resources director with Irish Rail. "There are shortages of craft workers and experienced electrical engineers but we are managing to meet our needs in this regard. We are also recruiting operative staff for stations. These jobs include ticket checkers, train guards and so on. We promote internally so our locomotive drivers tend to have been promoted from station staff. We are in the process of establishing a career development centre to assist our staff progress their careers within the organisation. We are also in the process of moving from a low wage, high overtime environment to one of high wages and fixed hours as well as moving from a six-day to a five-day week which makes careers here that much more attractive."

Another area of the market which remains buoyant is the financial area. "The market for accountants and finance professionals is still buoyant, particular at the more senior level," says Laura McGrath, director of financial staff recruitment specialist Michael Warwick Nicholls. "Salaries are still increasing in the area but not at the rate of the last few years.

In the high tech sector financial staff were commanding a 20 per cent premium on salary but this is now coming back to market levels due to the slowdown in that area. Indeed, while we had many candidates looking to the high tech sector last year, this year they are looking towards more traditional sectors."

In terms of sourcing candidates she says that there is a good flow of candidates within Ireland but this isn't always enough. "Many multinational companies are now changing the way they do business with recruitment consultancies and are coming to exclusive or preferred supplier agreements with one or a small number of them," she says.

'To succeed in this environment it is vital to have a good flow of candidates. We have two companies in the UK through which we can source candidates and we are also a member of AIMS, an international network of independent recruitment consultancies, which allows us to source candidates from continental Europe and elsewhere. Ireland is still very attractive to overseas candidates and we are seeing an increasing number of accountants from Australia and New Zealand working here."

While the sectors may still be buoyant, regionalisation is now the new focus of industrial policy. "In the 1990s we had very strong growth but this was mainly confined to the Dublin area and the other major urban centres of Cork, Limerick and Galway," says Sean Dorgan, chief executive of IDA Ireland. "The issue for us now is to make things happen in the regions, particularly in areas such as the Border, midlands and south-east which have not succeeded in attracting investments to the extent we would like.

"We have started moving our own people out into key centres such as Sligo, Athlone, and Waterford in an effort to help lift these regions.

"Undoubtedly the infrastructural improvements to be made under the National Development Plan will help make the regions more attractive but we need to create a regional dynamic with the mix of industries and other services which will make them attractive in their own right."

The challenge, he says, is in making the regions as attractive as Dublin. "Dublin has great attractions. It has fantastic access, an international airport, three universities, a number of institutes of technology, excellent telecommunications infrastructure, and it is a buzzing place. Everything that a global business needs is in Dublin. We need to build similar strengths in the regions. But it can be done.

"Prumerica has recruited 150 software developers to Donegal from a zero base inside one year and recently announced an expansion which will see a further 300 jobs created over the next three years."

Enterprise Ireland has also embarked on a new regional strategy. The strategy is aimed at achieving a better balance of enterprise development across the country and adopts a new approach which the organisation intends to take over the next three years in driving growth in regional enterprise.

The new strategy represents a key change in regional economic development in that it is not based primarily on the relocation of companies but rather on creating and sustaining enterprise in regional and local communities.

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