IDA Ireland will no longer measure its success merely by gross jobs created, but by the regional spread and the quality of the employment it grant-aids, the agency said yesterday. Nonetheless, 1998 was another record year for overall job creation, and 1999 is in line to match it, the IDA said.

Releasing the annual report, the IDA's new chief executive, Mr Sean Dorgan, said companies it supported created almost 16,000 new jobs in 1998, and increased their exports by 29 per cent to £21 billion (€26.7 billion) a year.

The IDA's chairman, Mr Denis Hanrahan, said that after five record-breaking years of job creation, the agency was now refocusing its activity in response to the changing needs of the State. This would mean a greater emphasis on job creation outside of the Dublin and eastern area, and on the quality of jobs in general, he said.

"The new focus specifically aims to deliver more than half of all new jobs from future greenfield projects into the Objective 1 (western and Border counties designated for maximum EU grant aid) regions," Mr Hanrahan said.

IDA executives said they were aware that the western and Border areas were often less attractive to multi-national firms as locations for their operations, citing poor roads, airports with infrequent flights, and other infrastructure deficiencies such as electricity supply.

Mr Dorgan said the IDA would strive to overcome these problems, as it had in the past in other areas, but also called for increased spending on infrastructure through the Government's proposed development plan.

"Rather than thinking in terms of a 20-year time-frame, we need to break the back of it within five, seven, or 10 years at the very most," Mr Dorgan said. "The money is there."

In a significant internal move designed to favour investment outside Dublin, Mr Dorgan said each of his top executives had been given personal responsibility not just for a particular sector, but also for a particular part of the State.

The agency produced a new organisation structure graph which shows, for example, that Mr Denis Molumby, who specialises in attracting international and non-regulated financial services, is also now charged with operational focus for the Republic's Border counties.

"This new structure recognises the critical need to deliver more to the regions and to integrate and co-ordinate the focus of everybody in the organisation on our regional development mandate," Mr Dorgan said.

"From now on," he added, "We will measure our performance not only against job creation results but also by monitoring the regional distribution and the quality of projects, as indicated by the level of salaries, the skills' content in companies and the range of additional functions beyond the core manufacturing or service activity."

Mr Dorgan said the IDA supported 1,140 foreign firms in the Republic, employing directly some 116,000 people. During 1998, the agency negotiated a total of 243 projects, 115 of which were in Dublin's International Financial Services Centre.

Of the remaining projects, he added, 66 were greenfield investments, and 62 were expansions by companies already established in the Republic. The agency paid almost £138 million in grants to companies that paid more than £800 million in corporate tax. The impact of IDA client firms through spending in the Republic's economy grew by 19.4 per cent.

"Ireland now gains over £8 billion a year from the local spending of overseas companies," Mr Dorgan said. "The cost of a sustained job is averaging £11,462 - the lowest cost ever."

He said that, while it was too early to make firm predictions about 1999, the indications so far were that it would be at least as good a year, in terms of overall job creation, as 1998.