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Ireland has reaped a fine harvest of new technology jobs despite the nation's propensity to talk itself into a recession.

IRELAND has reaped a fine harvest of new technology jobs despite the nation's propensity to talk itself into a recession. In the first three weeks of July, some 160 technology jobs were created by four technology and telecoms providers.

Despite the fact that Siemens is to cut over 16,000 jobs worldwide as part of a restructuring, Cork is to benefit from 60 jobs being created in the city by the company's ICT division.

Siemens' IT Services division is to create 60 networking and technical positions on the back of opportunities in the Irish market and the availability of skilled, trained staff. Siemens already employs more than 1,100 staff in Dublin,Cork and Belfast.

Communications player Complete Telecom also revealed plans to create 10 technology and sales jobs at its Dublin headquarters to facilitate regional expansion. The bulk of the new posts will be in engineering and support departments, with the remainder made up of business development, technical sales and pre-sales staff. Recruitment will start immediately.

Complete said it expects to have all 10 new employees in place by the end of September. Dublin-based technology company Typtech has created 15 jobs on the back of the launch of a new managed servicefor SMEs.

The 15 high-quality jobs will be integral to a new service that aims to provide proactive and integrated management of customers' entire IT operations, and is targeted at Irish companies with between 10and 100 employees.

The first posts have just been filled, and the rest are expected to be filled during 2008 and 2009. The new positions will increase Typetec's employee count by more than 30pc.

"Hi-tech jobs, such as those being created by Typetec, are the best source of future growth in the Irish workforce," said Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan TD.

"As we move towards a fully knowledge-based economy, it is vital we continue to expand our high-tech services industry." The Shannon Free Zone is to benefit from 35 jobs as part of an expansion of hardware and software design specialist Mentor Graphics.

Mentor Graphics already employs 80 people at a 31,000sq ft facility in Shannon where it provides design support to some of the world's most successful electronics and semiconductor companies.

A further 15 jobs are to be created in the zone by financial services player PAFS Ireland, which is establishing a new business centre.

More good news for Limerick came in the form of 49 jobs from ON Semiconductor, a US supplier of energy efficient silicon solutions, which is to establish an R&D centre in Raheen Business Park, with the support of IDA Ireland.

ON Semiconductor's new R&D centre in Limerick aims to become a centre of expertise in digital power management and also thermal management for nextgeneration processors.

It will develop controller and driver integrated circuits for next-generation processors in servers, gaming consoles, desktop and laptop computers. Some 28 employees are already in place.

"The choice of Limerick for this investment is a major endorsement of Ireland's ability to successfully implement such technologically advanced R&D projects and to meet the company's recruitment needs," said Minister Coughlan. "This investment is a further important development for the growing cluster of integrated circuit design companies in the mid-west region."

John Kennedy