THREE IDA Ireland-backed firms have announced 485 new jobs at locations in Cork, Kildare, Galway and Sligo.

An additional 150 construction jobs will be supported over the next two years in Sligo as Abbott Pharmaceutical invests €85 million in its manufacturing facilities.

US technology giant HP is creating 150 software research and development positions over the next three years at its sites in Leixlip, Co Kildare, and Galway.

It is also hiring an extra 130 technical support staff in Kildare.

The new Abbott manufacturing facilities in Sligo will support its pipeline of new drugs, primarily for the treatment of cancer, kidney conditions and viral infections, said Calum Park, site director for Abbott Ireland Pharmaceutical Operations.

The plant will be completed in 2014, and will provide 175 new jobs, bringing total employment at the site to 300. Most of the jobs will be filled before the plant opens.

Abbott has 13 manufacturing, commercial and shared services sites across the country, which employ nearly 4,000 people.

In Cork, online games company Big Fish Games is to create 30 jobs with the establishment of a research and development centre that looks at how cloud computing technologies can be applied to gaming.

The timing of the announcements was co-ordinated by IDA Ireland and coincided with the attendance of Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton at an Invest in Ireland conference hosted by former US president Bill Clinton in New York yesterday.

Speaking from that event, IDA Ireland chief executive Barry O’Leary described it as “an excellent day”, and said the announcements would highlight to “US business leaders the many advantages of investing in Ireland”.

The new HP jobs would not have been secured without “a collaborative approach” with IDA Ireland, said Martin Murphy, managing director of HP Ireland.

“Foreign direct investment is a very competitive space at the moment,” said Mr Murphy. “We are competing with a lot of other countries to win jobs.”

Mr Murphy said the 130 technical support jobs were predicated on HP locating the RD jobs in Ireland. The software development jobs will be split between a Galway laboratory, which looks at new ways of delivering and managing software, and the Silicon Valley company’s Leixlip campus.

HP will have about 4,200 staff in Ireland following the expansion, but Mr Murphy said local management were in talks with its parent company and the State about other projects that could be brought to Ireland.

Big Fish Games is a US firm that specialises in so called “casual games”, which are played on the web and mobile devices, and promises to deliver a new game every day. Established in 2002, it currently has about 70 staff in Cork.

Its chief executive Jeremy Lewis is a vocal champion of investment in Ireland, and has appeared in IDA promotional videos.

The computer games industry employs about 1,500 in Ireland, but IDA and other State agencies have identified it as an area of potential significant jobs growth.

The global healthcare group Abbott employs 91,000 people and sells its products in more than 130 countries. In the quarter to the end of December last it had revenues of $10.3 billion.

HP is the largest technology company in the world with a portfolio that spans printing, PCs, software and services. Following a number of strategic blunders during 2011, former eBay chief executive and candidate for California governor Meg Whitman assumed control at HP.