The Cabinet is likely to approve shortly grant aid for a major expansion by Xerox, sources said last night. The move will see more than 1,000 new jobs at the US multinational's new sites in Dublin and Dundalk, eventually bringing its workforce in the Republic to almost 3,500.
Neither Xerox nor IDA Ireland would comment on the matter yesterday, but IDA sources said the jobs agency had been in negotiations for the project for some time.
Xerox, based in Stamford, Connecticut, has around 90,000 employees around the world; its products range from copiers and fax machines to scanners, publishing systems and document management software.
One year ago, Xerox said it would create 2,200 jobs at two new sites in Dublin and Dundalk. The company immediately acquired a 100-acre land bank just outside Dundalk and began building a large manufacturing facility. Xerox also acquired land at Blanchardstown, Dublin, started construction of its European shared services, and embarked on a recruitment drive. Some 600 have already been hired at the Dublin site.
Sources say the progress of the project has been very successful, with the construction work on or even ahead of schedule, and little difficulty in finding appropriate staff.
This alone would have made the Republic a front-runner as a location for any further expansion in Europe by Xerox. The type of development represented by the Irish project has strengthened further the IDA's hand in its pursuit of additional growth.
Xerox's development in the Republic centres around a relatively new business model, known as strategic capital centres and developed most famously by IBM after its massive 1980s restructure. Rather than constructing one factory here and there, this model involves the construction of large campuses, with several major business activities in one place.
Examples in the Republic of this are the Intel and HewlettPackard operations at Leixlip, Co Kildare. The model is particularly attractive from the IDA's perspective, because it reduces the dependence of Irish jobs on one particular product or technology.
"No one at Intel is doing the same job they were doing five years ago," an IDA source said yesterday, to illustrate this point.
The latest expansion is likely to be greeted with anger by politicians in Britain and the Netherlands. MEPs from these countries proposed and passed a motion of censure at the European Parliament in January, condemning Xerox for expanding in Ireland while seeking redundancies in England and the Netherlands.
