Government may delay new jobs statement

THE Government is likely to hold back on its announcement of 300 new technology sector jobs until Thursday, using the good news to underscore tomorrow's expected revelation that there has been a further drop in unemployment.

Industry sources said there would be around 200 jobs at the localisation service of Berlitz, the language specialist company, in Blackrock, Dublin. The centre specialises in rewriting and customising software programmes for various national markets.

A further 100 jobs are expected at Kao Infosystems, which programmes CD ROMs in the Cloverhill Industrial Estate in Dublin.

The new recruitment drive by Berlitz, which will substantially increase the company's Irish workforce, comes just 14 months after it decided to double its workforce to 270.

The Irish operation's main business is localising computer programmes for international customers such as Microsoft, Oracle and Lotus. It was responsible for the full translation and localisation of Microsoft's Windows 95 operating software in Danish and Norwegian.

The Irish company is a subsidiary of Berlitz International which employs 4,000 people and has annual sales of over £300 million. It is involved in language, training, translation and publishing, and is best known for its phrasebooks and guidebooks, which are themselves produced in a variety languages.

Berlitz Ireland sends the majority of its texts to be translated to its offices in a country that speaks the target language. The texts are then sent back to Dublin, incorporated into the software, localised for the markets concerned, and tested.

The jobs, likely to be well paid, are another endorsement of the IDA Ireland strategy of targeting high tech companies. Last year, the agency helped to create 13,180 new jobs, many of them in the technology sector.

Software is already the Republic's third largest employer and exporter. More than 60 per cent of all packaged software sold in Europe is shipped from Ireland.

There are more than 500 software companies in Ireland, employing an estimated 12,000 people. Because the domestic market is so small, almost all of these companies are export driven. Export sales for the sector are believed to touch £3 billion a year.

Earlier this month, the Government said it was worried that demand for technology graduates would soon outstrip supply. The Department of Enterprise and Employment and the Department of Education announced a plan to provide an additional 4,000 places a year for students of computer, languages and technical skills.

Tomorrow, the Government is expected to release the Live Register figures for March, thought to show yet another fall in the official jobless total.