TWO COMPANIES will between them bring almost 220 new jobs to Shannon and Cork over the coming three years.
Pharmaceutical group Eli Lilly will create 100 finance jobs at a European services centre in Cork city, while Genworth Financial will add 117 new jobs to its Shannon base.
Eli Lilly said its new positions, to be in place within 12 months, would provide general accounting and cash services to the group’s European operations. The drugmaker will begin recruiting immediately, with most of the jobs scheduled to be filled by next spring.
The Genworth Financial positions will be created over the coming three years. The jobs will be based in Shannon Free Zone, and will be in the operations division of the lifestyle protection business. Genworth designs insurance products to help consumers meet repayment obligations on loans, mortgages and other products in the event of accident, illness or other unplanned events.
Genworth said the recruitment drive would bring its employment numbers in Shannon to 462 over the coming three years.
The Shannon Free Zone hosts more than 100 companies generating €3.5 billion in annual sales – 90 per cent of which are to export markets.
Eli Lilly already employs 450 staff at a manufacturing plant in Kinsale, Co Cork.
The firm’s finance director, Kay Flynn, said the firm had a good track record in Cork, also pointing to the availability of a skilled workforce and a “strong shared services base in Ireland” as being among the reasons for the expansion.
Eli Lilly’s Kinsale plant manufactures the active ingredients for a number of the group’s pharmaceutical products, including drugs to treat schizophrenia, depression and diabetes. The company also has a marketing and sales base in Dublin, and a shared services centre in Cork city.
Minister for Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe said the Government had worked closely with the company to secure this investment in Cork, and the firm’s decision to invest in the county “attested strongly to the academic calibre of the local labour pool and the quality of our higher education institutions”.
“We have shown again to the world that we can attract strategic investments from leading multinationals by providing the right mix of skills, workforce flexibility and pro-business policies to support business expansion plans and create jobs for our people,” said Mr O’Keeffe.
