PayPal, the online payments firm owned by eBay Inc., plans to create 1,000 new jobs in Ireland, providing a significant boost for the Irish government's efforts to lift the economy, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said Tuesday.
Last week, Kenny launched a jobs plan to create 100,000 posts over the next four years, as his government attempts to escape its international bailout and get back to market funding.
"I am delighted PayPal has made this vote of confidence in Ireland," he said.
PayPal first came to Ireland in 2003 and already employs 1,400 people in west Dublin. It will create 1,000 more jobs in Dundalk town, Co Louth, about 85 kilometers north of the Irish capital, said Louise Phelan, a senior executive at PayPal.
She hopes to have about 350 Dundalk positions filled by the end of this year in customer support, sales, finance and compliance.
The government wants to boost growth even as it is obliged to bring in austerity measures to control a huge budget deficit.
Its so-called Action Plan for Jobs sees it creating 100,000 posts by 2016 in areas such as agriculture, health care, cloud computing and computer gaming, and in manufacturing.
Ireland is in the second year of a program with the European Union and International Monetary Fund that requires it bring in more spending cuts and tax increases to reduce its budget deficit of about 9.8% of gross domestic product last year to a bailout target of 8.6% this year.
Analysts have said the government may miss this 2012 budget target if economic growth that is currently mired by the euro-zone debt crisis fails to strengthen in the coming months.
The Irish central bank in recent weeks cut its 2012 economic outlook, saying Irish GDP will grow 0.5% this year, citing slowing growth for exports from the country's many pharmaceutical and computers software and service plants.
And Kenny has in recent weeks said the EU and the euro zone is now focusing more on boosting growth as it gets a grip on the bloc's debt crisis.
Ireland's competitive 12.5% corporation tax rate has helped lure many U.S. and EU corporations to establish European head offices and plants in the country.
