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TANAISTE and Minister for Enter- prise, Mary Coughlan paid tribute to the workers and the organisations in the Shannon Free Zone when she came to announce a €50 million in- vestment at Intel last week.
“It is down to the calibre of the people on this site in Shannon that they have been able to get this invest- ment…investment in our people and our skills is how we are going to re- main competitive.”
She added that the gain of up to 134 jobs in research and develop- ment are the result of the “smart economy building on the knowledge economy .
Intel will invest more than €50 mil-
lion in a major expansion, supported by Shannon Development, over the next four years, bringing the total employment to approximately 300. Congratulating Intel on theirinvest- ment the Tanaiste said, “Knowledge is now the key to competitive advan- tage in smart economies. Growing the level of R and D investment by new and existing multi-nationals in Ireland is a key Government priority. Today’s investment announcement by Intel gives very real meaning to our ambition to develop Ireland’s smart economy, and is a wonder- ful testament to the highly talented skills base at Intel Shannon.” Welcoming the announcement Vincent Cunnane, Chief Execu- tive of Shannon Development said,
“This major investment at the Shan- non Free Zone is a further vote of confidence in Shannon as a competi- tive location for high tech knowledge based investment on a global scale. We are delighted to have secured this expansion for Shannon, in collabora- tion with IDA Ireland.”
“We are delighted with the expan- Sion decision,’ commented Jonathan Walsh, General Manager of Intel Shannon. “It comes as the result of our world class track record of R and D over the last eight years, the highly developed technical market- ing competencies and also our suc- cess in attracting the highest quality research talent, domestically and in- ternationally.”
He predicted Intel “will emerge
from this downturn stronger relative to our competitors than we were go- ing into it”.
The investment is in further de- veloping leading edge 32 nanometre design capabilities for embedded processors.
Intel predicts that there will be 15 billion connected devices by the year 2015. The Intel investment will in- volve two separate R and D projects. The first is a new hardware project involving advanced 32nm _ silicon design and validation, which aims to enable the next generation of products for small- to medium-sized businesses. The second project is a software development project, which will benefit sectors including the au- tomotive and security sectors.