A senior IBM executive has said that rather than trying to prevent lower-skilled jobs moving offshore, governments should focus on education and training to ensure their citizens were qualified for higher value roles.

"This is almost Darwinian in that low-skill things move to low-cost locations and what has to come in and take its place is high skill," said Steve Mills, senior vice-president with IBM's software group.

Last month, it was revealed that 900 Xerox call-centre staff being outsourced to IBM may have to move to IBM locations in Scotland or Bulgaria or face redundancy.

Mr Mills, who is seen by many as second only to IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano due to the growth of IBM's software business, was in Dublin this week for an event at IBM's technology campus in north Co Dublin. IBM employs almost 3,500 staff in Ireland.

Mr Mills said that the nature of the software development IBM undertakes in Ireland means it is not suitable for moving to a low-cost location. According to Mr Mills, the complexity of IBM products means that programmers need to build up a sophisticated understanding of customer needs, which takes a considerable amount of time.

"You need highly-skilled, trained developers," said Mr Mills. "Certainly, here in Ireland we have some very deep skills and it's a very customer proactive team."

Mr Mills also said there were issues around quality, reliability, skills availability and protection of intellectual property in emerging economies, which meant IBM was cautious about transferring "critical work" there.

He also praised the Irish education system and the "affinity" that has been built up between Irish companies and those in the US.