THE Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, began a four-day visit to California yesterday with an announcement that 700 jobs will be created in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, as a result of a £31.5 million expansion at the Guidant plant, which manufactures medical devices.
The new jobs at the plant, located at the former Seagate building, will be created over five years and will result in total employment of 1,200 people.
In a separate development yesterday, a subsidiary of the German airline Lufthansa is promising to create 100 jobs over three years in a new software operation in Galway. A further 81 jobs are promised in three Co Sligo companies.
However, Co Tipperary also received bad news with the announced closure of a ribbon-manufacturing plant, C.M. Offray in Roscrea, leading to 140 job losses.
Mr Ahern said old manufacturing jobs associated with plastics, buttons, ribbons and sweets were less a part of Ireland's new economic paradigm. "You don't win them all but they will be drinking pints in Clonmel tonight," Mr Ahern told The Irish Times in an interview between meetings with high-tech industry leaders at a San Jose hotel.
"I was in Silicon Valley 12 1/2 years ago, and Ireland was a very different country. We had 17.4 per cent unemployment. We now have 6 per cent."
The focus of Mr Ahern's trip to the US west coast is Silicon Valley where 30 Irish companies, primarily selling technology products and services, now operate.
At a private lunch yesterday, Mr Ahern met 15 high-tech industry leaders to promote investment in Ireland. Later he launched Enterprise Ireland's West Coast Networking Forum, an interactive online electronic bulletin board which will allow Irish companies in the US and at home to exchange information.
Mr Ahern said the US was Ireland's fastest-growing export market. Between 1994 and 1997 total Irish exports to the US more than doubled. "The biggest growth sector is information technology, and Irish-owned IT companies are forecast to more than treble their US sales over the next three years."
He dismissed any suggestion that US companies might exert too heavy an influence on the Irish economy. "Our trade unions would say they have had less of a problem with American multinationals."
Mr Ahern was scheduled to receive a Spirit of Ireland Award last night from the city authorities in San Jose, which is twinned with Dublin. After a private day to be spent at the racetrack in San Jose today, Mr Ahern is due to travel to San Francisco tomorrow.
On Monday he will give a policy speech on Northern Ireland to a luncheon meeting of the Commonwealth Club and World Affairs Council in San Francisco. He will then fly to Washington for the traditional St Patrick's Day festivities at the White House.