The Sean Quinn Group's new glass manufacturing plant at Derrylin, Co Fermanagh, is to create 329 jobs over the next five years.

The plant will be one of the largest in Ireland and involves an investment of £60 million sterling. The new plant will manufacture glass containers and intends to actively seek overseas buyers for its products.

The plant is only the second in Ireland and represents new competition for the Ardagh-owned Irish Bottle Company, based in Dublin.

Production will begin in June and the company expects to be able to supply products to the marketplace by August.

Of the £60 million invested, some £13.1 million is coming from the North's Industrial Development Board.

The project has faced continued opposition from British glass manufacturers, which claim it will cause job losses in the Republic and the north of England. The company's chairman and managing director, Mr Sean Quinn, has previously said that even if the glass industry, worth £700 million, expanded by only 2 per cent over the next five years, his planned output of 160,000 tonnes would not fill that demand. The main competition for the plant comes from low-priced German and Dutch imports.

The 20,000 sq m site is close by a cement works, quarries and a concrete products plant, all of which are owned by the company. It is expected some raw materials for the glass plant will be supplied by the local quarries. 'This major investment by the Sean Quinn Group introduces an important new industry and the latest state-of-the-art technology to a rural area far from the traditional centres of manufacturing industry,' said Mr Gerry Loughran, permanent secretary of the North's department of economic development.

The Sean Quinn Group now employs about 1,600 people between its interests in concrete, glass, hotels and insurance.