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Plus, minus for Irish business

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The company announced last week that it would be expanding its European headquarters in the west of the capital. It has taken on 900 people in Ireland since setting up base there in 2003.
The internet giant has more than 180 million users world-wide and has around 80 million items up for auction at anyone time. eBay’s European Customer Support Center and its affiliated internet payments company Paypal are both based at Blanchardstown.
The company said it was looking to hire multilingual staff, financial experts and risk managers as part of the fresh recruitment drive.
eBay’s announcement came against a backdrop of jobs losses in other sectors, prompting comment that Ireland now has a “twin-speed” economy.
In Mallow, Co. Cork, Greencore closed its Irish Sugar plant, laying off 300 people in the process. The former state company said reductions in European Union subsidies had made sugar production in Ireland unviable.
Wyeth Medica meanwhile announced that it was to lay off 250 people in Newbridge, Co. Kildare.
Traditional manufacturing has been on the wane in Ireland for some time with a decrease in production across a range of sectors.
According to the most recent figures from the Central Statistics Office, the production of basic chemicals fell by 19.1 percent last year, food products were down by 5.7 percent, the manufacture of tobacco goods was down 18.3 percent, textiles was down 8.9 percent and clothes was down 4.1 percent.
Twenty years ago, one in four jobs in Ireland was in the manufacture of products. The current figure is closer to one in eight and decreasing.
The eBay job announcement is viewed positively as a sign that Ireland is still able to compete with the low-labor cost economies of Eastern Europe and Asia when it comes to technology and high-level manufacturing.
Irish employers association Ibec warned that further investment was needed in secondary and third level education to ensure that Ireland would continue to attract high-tech jobs.
The association said that: “previously protected jobs in impersonal services such as retailing, college tuition, and business and information services, which can be delivered electronically, will increasingly feel the winds of competition.”

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