THE man from IBM urged the Minister for Enterprise and Employment to pick up the phone extension and listen in to the conversation, but Richard Bruton was unsure: "Are you sure that wouldn't be eavesdropping?"
He put on the headphones anyway, and heard an early morning customer, calling from somewhere in the United States, looking to Dublin for technical advice. The young graduate beside him fielded the call with consummate ease, and the Minister smiled. Another of his job promises had come true.
Mr Bruton had made this pledge on June 25th - that IBM would open a new customer support call centre, with at least 200 jobs, by October. Yesterday, IBM inaugurated the centre in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin. There are already 275 people at work there.
The facility is now taking 2,000 calls a day, from the United States, France, Italy and Spain. By next March, the computer company said, it would have 400 employees, speaking eleven different European languages. By the end of 1997, there will be 750 people, answering a total of 8,000 telephone calls each day.
Almost all of the new IBM workers are young language graduates and 70 per cent are Irish nationals. They have four year contracts and are paid on average £12,500 a year, plus a bonus. The centre will be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and aims to answer every customer call in 30 seconds or less.
After the IBM executives, accompanied by thrice Olympic gold medalist Michelle Smith, had taken the Minister, and at least three other public representatives, on a tour of the building, it was outside for a tree planting ceremony. The politicians jostled shamelessly for position around a silver birch sapling opposite the bank of photographers. Ms Smith, clearly an amateur when it comes to such high spirited horseplay, quickly found herself well out of sight at the very back, but didn't seem in the least put out.
In a brief speech some minutes later, Ms Smith revealed that she had used IBM computers in her training for the Olympics, for analysis of underwater video footage and for velocity graphs.
"When I told them, IBM said to me: `If you improve your times can we claim some of the credit?' Well, I don't know about that," she quipped.
In his speech, Mr Bruton said that Michelle Smith represented "the quality mark of Ireland in everything she's done in recent years". He also produced statistics to show that just over half of the 8,497 jobs that he and the IDA had promised had already been created.
. IBM said it made a profit of $1.28 billion (£800 million) in the third quarter, slightly lower than the $1.3 billion earned in the same period last year.
Earnings per share were $2.45 for the July to September quarter, up from $2.30 in 1995. The increase was two cents higher than forecast by most analysts. IBM said revenues had increased in North America, Asia and Latin America, but European revenues were flat.
The firm said sales had gained 8 per cent in the quarter to $18.06 billion from $16.75 billion the previous year.
