Small rise in full-time IDA jobs in 2004

FULL-TIME jobs in IDA-backed companies rose marginally in 2004 to 10,825.

The number of jobs lost was 10,628 giving a modest net gain year-on-year of just 197 jobs.

Industrial Development Agency chiefs are optimistic for 2005 with significant inward investment already achieved in this year.

Last year IDA supported firms committed to €5 billion in capital investment that will create 9,000 jobs over time.

The average wage paid by IDA backed companies was €40,000 or more in the case of half the jobs, well above the industrial average wage of €28,000.

In one instance, the average wage per job shot up to €90,000 per employee. The IDA refused to name the company or the number of jobs involved.

Chief executive Sean Dorgan warned that the days of generating over 22,000 jobs were long gone. That was the figure achieved in 2000 when the global and the Irish economies were booming, he said.

“Being realistic, the kind of job creation the country can expect from inward investment will be in the region of 10,000 per annum, give or take,” he said.

Growth going forward in both economics and jobs “is going to be more about quality and the substance and about the value in it for the future”, he said.

“Measuring that in terms of numbers of jobs is a very poor measure,” he said.

“We’ll continue to count jobs and to show jobs because it’s important that the total number doesn’t fall away,” he said.

In 2001 foreign companies accounted for over 141,000 jobs against 128,946 at the end 2004.

Mr Dorgan rejected claims that inward investment to Ireland has been slashed as suggested in a recent OECD report.

The OECD survey was much broader than just figures for direct investment, and were “quite volatile”, he said.

“They were comparing apples, oranges and pears while we compare apples with apples,” he said.

IDA Ireland chairman, John Dunne, said Ireland was now rated throughout the world as one of the best locations for foreign direct investment.

International surveys show Ireland as the most globalised county in the world, in first place in the case of overseas direct investment flows when measured as a percentage of GDP, he said.

For 2005, regional policy is coming through better than it was in the past with several key announcements already in the bag. Projects for locations such as Letterkenny, Sligo town, Naas, Galway, Cork have already been announced.

However, the jobs figures show that the east coast accounts for over 61,000 of the 128,946 jobs accounted for by the multinational sector in Ireland.

That contrasts with 11,868 for the west and 4,952 for the midlands.