Security company Symantec has said it would have to "look at" the general situation for its operations in Ireland if the State's 12.5 per cent corporate tax regime changed.

However, chief executive John Thompson said the company, which employs more than 2,000 people at its Dublin security centre and at Shannon-based Veritas, did not come to Ireland solely on the basis of its tax benefits.

Asked by The Irish Timesabout the implications for Symantec's Irish operations if the European Union creates an EU-wide, standardised, higher-rate corporate tax regime, Mr Thompson said: "If there was a change, we'd certainly look at it, but it wouldn't be the single influence on a decision."

He added: "It is hard to speculate without knowing what they [ the EU] want to do. We went to Ireland because it made sense to have manufacturing and support there for our European market.

"We want to have products and support close to each market. The fact that Ireland had added tax benefits was secondary."

He noted that Symantec has operations in Singapore for similar reasons.

Mr Thompson was speaking during the company's annual user conference in Las Vegas.

At the four-day event, Symantec announced several new product suites and applications which integrate technologies acquired from a range of companies purchased by Symantec in the past two years.

The company has been criticised for an aggressive acquisition strategy, with some analysts raising doubts about its ability to blend a wide range of third-party products into security applications that organisations increasingly depend on.

Mr Thompson defended the acquisition as the obvious strategy in a consolidating software market, where it makes sense for large companies to acquire technologies from competitors rather than develop such applications themselves.