You can tell there's something unusual happening when a Minister for Finance tells the Dail he took in £895 million more tax revenue last year than he expected. With wages hardly rising above the rate of inflation, where did it come from?

Some was from companies, increasing their profits. Most of the extra cash, however, came from tens of thousands of new workers paying their income tax, VAT, alcohol taxes, petrol levies and stamp duty.

Next week, IDA Ireland will announce its figures for 1997, and its targets for this year. The agency has yet again broken all its previous records over the past 12 months, attracting one third of all US electronics investment and creating over 13,000 new jobs.

While the 1,400 job losses at Seagate - and redundancies elsewhere - are devastating for those involved, the overall net growth by IDA-sponsored companies will, in fact, be higher than ever.

Here, the contrast with our neighbours is even more astonishing; with most countries recording a net annual decline in industrial jobs, the Republic is showing a growth of around 10 per cent, or around 9,000 jobs.

For its part, Forbairt created 14,000 jobs in 1997, its best performance in more than 20 years. Its client companies made investment commitments of almost £500 million. The agency calculated a net increase in employment of 5,500, the highest increase since 1975.

The combined efforts of the two industrial agencies forced the Republic's unemployment rate below the European Union average for the first time in over a decade.

In Northern Ireland, the IDB trundled along in a comparatively pedestrian manner, announcing just 3,232 jobs to be generated by overseas firms and 1,263 by local companies.

Its biggest success, a 1,200-job expansion by Seagate announced in June, has been suspended by the company as part of the same cost-cutting programme which closed the Clonmel factory.

On the employment front, the Republic is now reaping the benefits of education policies put in place 25 years ago. The systematic targeting of key multinationals, as well as the social partnership approach to government are also paying huge dividends.

The IDA has snatched a far higher proportion of investment than it is entitled to; every one of the Fortune magazine top 10 pharmaceutical companies operates out of Ireland; of the top 20 electronics firms 12 have plants here.

But despite the most remarkable successes, the lives of many remain untouched, and there are clouds on the horizon.

"If you draw a line across the country from Dublin to Galway, the people above that line, that whole part of our population, are not getting a ride on the Celtic Tiger at all," one IDA Ireland executive said recently.

The agency says that this huge area will be its major focus in the coming 12 months, and that it will offer companies that invest there up to 25 per cent more in grant cash than for going to Dublin.

But at the root of the IDA's problem are things over which it has little control. Time and again its executives have come close to convincing foreign companies to invest in the west, only to be told that the appalling road network and poor flight connections make it just too much hassle for visiting managers.

But the IDA is already starting to concentrate on something it can influence; redesigning and building the industrial land bank in towns north of the Dublin-Galway line.

There has been much work in Sligo, Athlone, Castlebar and Navan, for example, while Ballina, Cavan, Drogheda and Dundalk are targeted for this year.

Another area crucial to job creation, and over which the IDA has no control, is education and training and for the past decade the agency has stressed the quality of the workforce in Ireland.

But while the demographics show that the Republic will not run out of people - the population is set to rise until 2005 and then remain steady until at least 2020 - there is already a shortage of some skills and disciplines.

This means that even though there are more than 200,000 people on the dole, there is now almost full employment for those with skills.

The IDA knows that there is little point putting in the huge effort required to attract low-tech manufacturers to Ireland, only to see them relocate to developing countries as soon as the grants run out.

One sector which does not necessarily require graduates is teleservices. Some years ago, the IDA began to target these companies, combining with Telecom Eireann to make the Republic an attractive location for service companies offering worldwide reservations and customer call centres.

The policy has worked exceptionally well, and the Republic now gets some 40 per cent of all telesales investment in the European Union.

With new technology making such centres even more efficient, and allowing the transfer of both voice and data in combination, such businesses are set to grow worldwide, and the IDA is sure to go on attracting its share.