Technology and software industries accounted for 80 per cent of new posts supported by Northern Ireland's jobs creation agency last year, according to figures released yesterday. Investment by companies totalling £417 million sterling (€691 million) - a 57 per cent increase on the previous year and promising a record 7,145 new jobs - was negotiated by the Industrial Development Board (IDB) with new foreign and existing clients in the year to the end of March 2000.

The agency said some 5,700 - 80 per cent - of the new jobs were in electronics and other high-tech manufacturing and tradable services, primarily software and network services.

Commenting on the end of year statement, IDB chairman Dr Alan Gillespie said: "The results clearly demonstrate that the transformation of Northern Ireland into the knowledge-driven economy envisaged in [the government's] strategy 2010 and in the IDB's corporate plan, Competing Globally, is already gathering pace."

But amid the good news there had been 2,428 job losses in traditional industries, particularly textiles and clothing, said Dr Gillespie.