The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, said yesterday she believed a target set by the Donegal Task Force of 10,000 new jobs for the county by 2006 was achievable. The body's recommendation would "in the main" be implemented by Government.
She was speaking in Inishowen, Co Donegal, where she announced the creation of 166 full-time and 36 part-time jobs in six Irish-owned companies.
She said she also expected an announcement within three weeks of a new software development centre providing 150 jobs for Letterkenny. The IDA was at the "very final" stage of negotiations with a large US financial services company.
Ms Harney met workers from Jay Bee Ltd, the Carndonagh clothing company which announced its closure on Wednesday with the loss of 114 jobs. She said the problem in Donegal had been an over-dependence on textiles, a sector "no longer in the main competitive in Ireland or in Europe".
Developing the skills base of the workforce was now important and IT training provided by the Institute of Technology in Letterkenny had played an important role in attracting the US company now in talks with the IDA.
"The challenge for those losing their jobs at Jay Bee and other places is to ensure that they are adaptable and retrained for other jobs, and I believe that is possible," she said.
She would not accept that there was no point in retraining. "They may say that the jobs aren't as close to them as they might be, but in the past it was a question of emigration. Certainly, there are jobs within this economy, but what I want to do is to try to bring the jobs closer to the people," she added.
A huge effort had been put into "turning the ship around" in Co Donegal over the past two years, and this would continue. "The IDA and Enterprise Ireland have probably put more effort into Donegal over the past 1 1/2 years than would have been the case in the previous number of years," Ms Harney said.
She was working on establishing a Dublin-Derry air connection which would add invaluably to Donegal.
The Donegal Task Force, set up in response to more than 1,000 job losses in the textile sector in the past 15 months, has called for a target of 10,000 new jobs to be created by 2006. Its chairman, Mr Michael McLoone, conceded at the publication of the report last July that this was seen as unrealistic by the development agencies.
However, Ms Harney said yesterday she believed it was achievable. "I think Donegal has an advantage in that the task force now has a clear economic strategy for the county," she said.
The report also called for an allocation of £730 million from Government over the next seven years. "I believe in the main that we will see much of the task force recommendations in the operational programmes framed under the National Development Plan," she said. She believed the funds requested would be available.
Donegal, she said, had advantages over other counties because it could draw on a pool of labour from over the Border and was also close to Derry and the port of Larne.
Two of the six companies announcing expansions yesterday are Dublin technology companies which are to set up satellite operations in Donegal. The Bromley Group is to employ 35 people at a call centre in Letterkenny, and Eland Technologies Ltd has opened a Letterkenny office providing 10 jobs.
The other companies concerned are Forward Emphasis, of Belfast, creating 19 full-time and 36 part-time jobs in a call centre in Malin; Donegal town-based Viasec Ltd expanding its workforce from 18 to 70; Hamel Clothing Ltd in Letterkenny taking on 10 more staff; and a clothing company, Clubman Omega, hiring 40 more workers.