Technology firms announced the creation of more than 150 jobs in Limerick yesterday. The jobs will be spread across three separate companies. Electronic payments software group ACI Worldwide will create 100 new positions over the next five years.

The company is recruiting staff for research and development, software programming, technical support and finance functions.

Iain Kenny, managing director of ACI Worldwide Ireland, said the centre's main role was to manage research that would feed directly into product development. The Limerick facility will manage development work being carried out in overseas development centres. The first of these is at Timisoara, Romania and Mr Kenny said another two would come on stream which would be capable of handling "large-scale" development.

The higher value architecture and design of products will be carried out in Limerick.

ACI has over 800 customers worldwide, mostly large banks including Bank of Ireland and AIB. Mr Kenny said the company was impressed by the quality of candidates and would employ 14 people by the end of the month.

Danish company Rovsing announced the establishment of a software development centre at the National Technology Park in Plassey.

The firm develops software for testing the systems aboard satellites. It will recruit 30 staff with software and hardware engineering skills.

Rovsing Ireland will fulfil the company's contracts with the European Space Agency. It will also collaborate with Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre at University of Limerick, on software for the motor industry.

The establishment of AR Europe, the European distribution headquarters for US radio frequency technology firm AR Corporate, was also announced yesterday.

The operation will handle sales, marketing, customer support and distribution for the company in Europe and expects to take on 21 staff over the next three years.