IDA Ireland has reported another record year for foreign owned companies, which increased employment by 6,557 last year, a 29 per cent improvement on their 1994 performance.
The agency is already predicting that the next 12 months will be even more productive as the list of investments agreed last year come on stream. "I would expect that we will do even better in 1996," said IDA Ireland chief executive, Mr Kieran McGowan.
IDA Ireland is so confident about the medium term prospects for inward investment that it has set ambitious new targets for job creation, which envisage overseas companies creating 31,000 new jobs over the next three years. This would bring an average net increase of 6,600 new jobs per year, after losses were taken into account.
During the past 12 months a total of 11,500 new jobs were created by IDA backed companies which is twice the job creation level of 10 years ago. More than 10,100 were first time jobs, while the remainder were recoveries of jobs previously lost. Just over 4,960 jobs were lost during the year, giving a net increase of 6.557 jobs a 29 per cent increase on the 1994 figure which itself was a record. The average cost per job fell from £13,106 to a new low of £12,048.
The agency won a total of 114 industrial investments in manufacturing and internationally traded services, and 92 companies agreed to set up with licences from the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Dublin. More than half of the industrial projects were expansions of existing operations, while the remainder were greenfield investments.
The US remains the key market for inward investment and was responsible for more than half of the new industrial projects.
IDA Ireland, which has a staff of about 240 and 17 overseas offices, paid £93 million in grants last year, compared to £73 million in 1993, and had administration costs of £15 million. According to Mr McGowan, the agency has already signed agreements for next year which commit £100 million in state funds to new investment projects.
Despite the record year, Mr McGowan has warned that other European countries are becoming more competitive at attracting inward investment, and that huge projects with thousands of jobs are now much harder to win.
He also noted that increasingly large companies want to locate near centres of population. This desire is reflected in the spread of investment last year as the IDA's east region accounted for almost 6,000 of the 11,500 jobs created by foreign firms.
Mr McGowan said that although the preference of large companies for locating near cities was hard on rural areas they could compete for medium and smaller sized projects.
The growth in new full time jobs was matched by a 30 per cent expansion in the number of contract and part time positions created by foreign companies.
More than 11,000 contract and part time staff are now employed in the IDA backed sector an increase of 2,500 on this time last year.
Foreign owned companies paid an estimated £450 million in corporation tax last year, which is equivalent to one third of the entire corporation tax take. Spending in the Irish economy by overseas companies rose by 6 per cent to £5.15 billion.
Mr McGowan's optimism for this year's performance is based on a series of major inward investments agreed last year. These included Intel's 2,000 new jobs, Hewlett Packard 1,015 new jobs, and the 1,000 jobs promised by American Power Conversion.
The continuing buoyancy in the international technology sector is the main reason for the current growth. Industry analysts expect this expansion to continue for about 18 months, providing IDA Ireland with another three years of healthy figures.
The agency is also continuing to secure projects in the growing area of internationally traded services. This sector is expected to become increasingly more important in the later part of the decade.
