Xerox Europe is to invest a further £34 million (#43 million) in its Irish operations which will result in the creation of an additional 600 new jobs, 420 of them in Dublin and 180 at its Dundalk plant.
The IDA Ireland-backed investment will bring the total number employed by the company to 2,100 in Dundalk and 2,000 in Dublin by 2003. It will also bring total investment in Xerox's Irish operations to more than £400 million.
Announcing the jobs, the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, said the investment was a further significant endorsement of Ireland's continuing ability to provide the skilled people, services, infrastructure and cost competitive environment required to support a major global operation.
"At full implementation, Xerox will be of major strategic importance for Ireland as it will have an extensive range of business functions successfully operating at two separate locations. It will be a valuable reference for IDA Ireland in its marketing," Ms Harney said.
The company's 110-acre technology park at Dundalk, which is at an advanced stage of construction, will be one of Xerox's three manufacturing facilities in Europe. It will manufacture colour toner, ink jet printer cartridges, ink jet printer heads, power supplies and electronic assemblies as well as undertaking software development. The park is due for completion in mid-2000.
Xerox's Dublin operations, at Ballycoolin Business Park in Blanchardstown, include financial services, technical support and customer support operations for the European market.
At present, the company is ahead of its investment schedule and employs 1,775 people in the Republic, 1,490 of them in Dublin and the remaining 285 in Dundalk.
"All of us at Xerox are looking forward to the coming months as construction reaches its latter phases and more and more of our operations serving the European market go live," Mr Aidan Donnelly, general manager of the Irish operations said.
Xerox is the one of the world's largest information technology companies and had revenues of $5.4 billion (#5.3 billion) in Europe in 1998.
