Some of the gloom surrounding the labour market lifted yesterday as it emerged that 1,250 jobs will be created, the majority in the booming medi-care sector.
Abbott Laboratories, the US health giant, will recruit 900 in Longford and Sligo, copperfastening the Republic's reputation as an emerging player in the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries. A further 350 jobs were announced at a new technology park in Kildare.
Although Abbott and IDA Ireland have not formally confirmed that the Chicago group is to substantially upgrade its Irish presence, it is understood agreement has been reached and will be rubber-stamped by the Cabinet early next week.
Six hundred jobs will be created at a new manufacturing plant in Longford, where Abbott will be anchor tenant at a new technology campus. The remaining 300 will go to its Sligo facility, bringing the number working there to 1,400.
At the jobs announcement in Kildare, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said the Republic's attractiveness to multinational investors had been boosted with the introduction of a 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate at the start of the year. He announced that Rowan Transport would move its international distribution headquarters to the Gateway business park, Athy, employing 100. Elk House, which manufactures timber-frame houses, will create 250 jobs at the Co Kildare site.
Abbott, which opened its first Irish facility in 1974, is a leading manufacturer distributor of medical and pharmaceutical products and employs 70,000 globally.
Its decision to opt for the Republic is seen as confirming the State's status as a rising star of the healthcare industry and follows the announcement last week that Israeli pharmaceutical group Taro will base its European research and development headquarters in Roscrea, Co Tipperary.
The sector employs 20,000 in the Republic and contributed €700 million to the economy last year. Manufacturing accounts for the bulk of activity and there has been a concerted push by investment agencies to foster indigenous start- ups and to encourage multinationals to locate research and development facilities here.
An "incubation centre" for companies will open beside Abbott's Longford plant. Enterprise Ireland will fund the €500,000 project.
This week's flurry of job announcements is a timely boost for the Government, which has been forced to defend its employment strategies in the face of an inexorable rise in the numbers out of work over recent months.
With no end in sight to the slump in the high-technology industry - the cornerstone of investment policy through the 1990s - unemployment levels are set to breach the 5 per cent watershed by year's end. Some analysts have predicted it could climb as high as 6 per cent.
Presiding over the official opening of Gateway business park in Athy, the Minister for Finance said the the Government's pro-enterprise policies left the Republic strongly placed to win further investment in 2003. "The forces that determine a successful climate for business clearly dictate that policy must strive to encourage a constant willingness to create new business ventures, thereby creating new employment," Mr McCreevy added.
Abbott's decision to base in Longford was hailed as a "massive vote of confidence" by the town's chamber of commerce. A downward trend that culminated in 1998 with the closure of Atlantic Mills and 180 redundancies has been emphatically reversed over recent months, chamber president Mr Seamus Butler said.
With a further 1,300 jobs set to be created when Cardinal Healthcare opens a manufacturing base in Longford in late 2005, it is apparent the region has emerged from decades of depression.
Earlier this week, financial services provider Fexco announced plans to recruit 200 people for its contact centre in Caherciveen by the end of 2004. The company already employs 70.
