US firms demand secrecy in Irish deals

Major US groups are demanding to keep their contracts with Irish firms secret because of political concerns about outsourcing, it has emerged.

Deals worth $20 million (€15.4 million) will be formalised with 16 Irish firms on an Enterprise Ireland trade mission to the US, which is being led by Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin.

As small and medium-sized firms backed by Enterprise Ireland increase their presence in the US, further contracts for more than $100 million are under negotiation.

However, many of these deals will be kept private because some major US firms do not want to be seen to be sourcing services from outside their domestic market.

"They don't necessarily want to be flagged because of the sensitivities in the market," said Enterprise Ireland east coast US director David Byrne.

Mr Byrne said the political debate on outsourcing was a major concern for many groups, although others had commercial considerations in mind when choosing not to publicise their links with Irish groups.

With the trade deficit at record levels, the outsourcing of services from the US at the expense of American jobs came to the fore during the presidential election. The issue was a constant theme in the campaign of Democratic candidate John Kerry.

US groups imported $27 billion worth of goods and services from Irish firms in 2003, making Ireland the ninth biggest exporter of goods and services into that market.

Groups making deals with Irish firms this week include Wachovia Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Lehman Brothers, Pfizer and the World Bank.

The first contracts to be publicised yesterday included a $1 million deal between the US banking group Wachovia and Rockall Technologies, a Dublin-based technology firm. Wachovia will buy a securities collateral tracking system for consumer and wholesale loans from Rockall.

In addition, Tipperary Crystal disclosed that it had concluded a merger for an undisclosed sum with Blarney Stone Enterprises, a maker of crystal figurines and ornaments.

While details of the deal were not made public, Tipperary Crystal operations director Christopher Conway said Tipperary would use the deal to market share in the US on the back of Blarney Stone's presence there.

Cork software firm Qumas concluded a deal for $1 million with Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Belgium-based subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Qumas, which provides off-the-shelf products for compliance management in regulated industries, is expanding its US office in New Jersey.

Company president Kevin O'Leary said the company now had a client relationship with "four of the top five pharmaceutical groups in the world".

At a business lunch here yesterday, Mr Martin named e-learning groups Intuition and Pulse and research group Alimentary Health among those who had concluded "significant deals" with US firms in recent weeks.

He named Pfizer, the World Bank and Lehman Brothers as parties to some of those deals.