A sub-division of Oracle Corporation Ireland's Internet Sales Division (ISD) is to be located in Potsdam, Germany. It is understood that it is the German sales division at the ISD operation which will be located there to service German-speaking countries.

German newspaper reports yesterday indicated that some 100 jobs were planned.

However, this will not mean any job losses here, the managing director of Oracle Corporation Ireland, Mr Dermot O'Kelly, confirmed last night.

Mr O'Kelly said that Oracle's investment in eastern Germany was "because it's cheap and Germany is a big country for us".

The German decision apparently was taken following a recent trade mission to Ireland led by Mr Hans Cristoph Von Rohr, the chief executive of the Industrial Development Council for eastern Germany, who came here to attract companies and joint ventures to eastern Germany.

Mr O'Kelly said that Oracle was expanding its ISD division here.

He said the workforce was expanding. "We ship people in from Germany and France and back. In Germany, it's becoming increasingly difficult to get that number of Germans to come over here.

"A sub-division is being located in Germany. The net effect for Ireland is an increase in staff, so we are not losing any staff, not any Irish staff or scaling anything down."

He said Oracle's ISD operation was moving up the value scale from just a call centre, which is a fairly low-tech and low-skilled business, to a situation where staff did demonstrations of software over the internet.

"We need skilled people in Ireland and we need them to understand the technology to perform the sales.

"The Irish operation takes cost out of the business.

If we didn't have what we have in Dublin, the alternative is to send a representative out," he added.

Oracle employs around 950 people in Ireland and 42,000 worldwide.

The company has been here since 1987.