US political pressure holding up new jobs
US companies cutting jobs in the US and moving work to low cost countries has become a major political issue in the run up to November's Presidential election.
IDA chief executive Sean Dorgan yesterday confirmed that just 14 of 42 significant job creation investments approved by the IDA this year have been announced.
Mr Dorgan said many US companies do not want to announce overseas investments in the current pre-presidential election political climate. He hopes that many of the companies involved will commit to invest in Ireland later this year.
However, US companies already in Ireland are increasing their presence here but are not announcing the fact that they are taking on new people. Apple Computers is understood to be taking on 150 workers at present at its Hollyhill plant in Cork to meet demand for its new G5 computer range. The IDA's Mr Dorgan is very upbeat about job creation prospects and said the slowdown of the past three years for the most part is over and international companies are beginning to lift their levels of investment.
"We have every reason to be optimistic for the economy right now as we see substantial progress being made in securing the newer types of inward investment projects Ireland now requires," he said.
Launching the IDA's Annual Report 2003 yesterday chairman John Dunne said foreign direct investment (FDI) markets were showing increasing buoyancy.
The report shows that in 2003 total employment in IDA supported companies fell by 2.3% to 128,993 workers, 7% of all Irish people at work, down from 132,004 in 2002.
In a commentary accompanying the report the IDA said Ireland is strongly positioned in international services as a key destination for high growth companies.
"A position strengthened by this year's Finance Act provisions for headquarter operations, intellectual property management and research and development. Ireland can also win key corporate strategic functions and high revenue activity in the financial services sector, building on the IFSC's reputation as a high skills/high quality centre, with a low corporate tax," the IDA said.
According to the IDA new investments announced since the beginning of this year strongly endorse Ireland's position as the key location for high value FDI.
"Clearly, Intel's e1.6 billion investment in additional technologically advanced facilities was the single most important decision for IDA and for Ireland so far in the year. A number of other top quality investments negotiated by IDA and likely to be announced over coming weeks, add to the IDA's optimism that 2004 will be a strong year for FDI," the IDA said.
Mr Dorgan said while future announcements this year may not involve investments as big as Intel, the job creation capacity could match the expansion of Merrill Lynch's shared services facility in Dublin to 700 jobs.
Mr Dorgan said the investment by Liebherr in Killarney in adding research and development responsibility to its Irish operations, which have been here for 46 years, was typical of the high value added jobs they hope existing overseas operations in Ireland will create.
Mr Dorgan said that there was an encouraging increase of close to one fifth in the number of site visits by potential foreign direct investors.
"As we are now competing for the higher-level knowledge intensive projects the job of promotion and selling has become tougher," he said.
"Investors are nearly taking it for granted that we can deliver the basics in world-class infrastructure and services, but there is more intensive and thorough investigation by them of skills and competencies in the workforce than ever before."
The IDA also confirmed that up to 40% of the new jobs negotiated so far this year are above the €37,000 per annum salary benchmark they consider defines high skilled employment.
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