Amazon and IDA discuss European operations centre

Government officials met representatives from Amazon, the world's biggest internet retailer last week.

The discussions are reported to be concerning a new European operations centre in the capital, which could create hundreds of jobs for technology and marketing graduates.

Amazon officials also visited several internet data centres in Dublin to assess their suitability for hosting web servers.

The IDA have not officially confirmed last week's meetings, but said the agency would continue talks with all the main companies in the digital media sector since securing investments from Google, eBay and Overture.

It is believed that Amazon is looking at a number of European locations that could offer low-cost and reliable telecoms connectivity to enable it to serve its growing European business.

Amazon, which started as an online bookstore, now sells a range of other products over the web and is worth about $21bn (€17.55bn)and forecasts sales of $5.75bn(€4.81bn) in 2003 and $6.25bn(€5.22bn) in 2004.