The woman dubbed the second most-powerful woman in US business, Ms Meg Whitman, president and chief executive of eBay, opened the US firm's Dublin offices yesterday with a promise to create 500 jobs in Ireland by 2006.
Ms Whitman, who joined eBay in 1998 and sits on the boards of Procter & Gamble and Gap, said she was very proud of eBay's 225 staff in Dublin. Staff numbers will grow to between 700 and 800 by the end of 2005, she said.
The jobs announcement was expected following eBay's decision last September to establish a customer service centre in Dublin and an international headquarters for its payments subsidiary, PayPal. At the time, eBay said the new Irish office would support its European expansion.
PayPal and eBay have confounded their critics in recent years by regularly exceeding earnings expectations and establishing brands that are known far beyond the online world.
Ebay has 105 million registered users in 28 international markets and generated $8 billion (€6.7 billion) trade in the first quarter, said Ms Whitman.
Ebay provides an online auction platform that links buyers and sellers worldwide. Ebay users can bid for items listed on the website by sellers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ebay charges fees for enabling sellers to list the items on the site and takes a small cut from every sale.
"In less than a decade, the internet has fundamentally changed our lives," said Ms Whitman, who in 2003 was nominated the second-most powerful woman in business by Fortune magazine. "Everyone is using the internet now, even my 83-year-old mother surfs the Web every day."
Ebay is aggressively targeting international expansion in Europe and Asia to boost its growth and will provide customer-support for its British operations from Dublin. These staff will help answer customer queries and work to prevent fraud.
Its payment division, PayPal, which facilitates customers' money transfers and the payment for items over the internet, will use Dublin as its international headquarters.
The Tánaiste, Ms Harney, said eBay's presence in Ireland was testament to the fact that the State was recruiting a new type of investment. "Three of the world's highest-profile internet companies have a presence in Ireland and they are finding that the skills and knowledge that they require to operate successfully are here."
