DRETEC, a joint venture between Dresdner Bank and German software firm NorCom to provide banking computer applications, should create 150 jobs in Dublin by the end of next year, the director of the new company Ms Liliana Nordbakk said yesterday.

Ms Nordbakk, who established NorCom with her husband in the living room of their Munich home in 1989, said the investment in Ireland amounted to about three million deutschmarks (£1.2 million) and would explore and expand banking software technologies including online banking through the Internet.

Dr Gero Scholz, head of information technology at Dresdner, Germany's second-largest bank, said the calibre of Ireland's information engineers had placed it before other contenders, including India, Israel and Hungary. "In the long term, software development for Dresdner Bank need not be the only focus of DreTec. We have a clear plan to develop software solutions that can be sold as products," he said.