Private health insurance firm Laya Healthcare is to create 100 jobs in Cork over the next three years.

The former Quinn Healthcare firm, which employs 343 people at its Cork headquarters, made the announcement at its official launch today.

The company is Ireland’s second largest private health insurer and has 450,000 members.

Managing director Dónal Clancy said Laya would position itself as a “key consumer champion” in the private health insurance market.

“All of us involved in the sector recognise that there are significant issues and problems which need to be resolved,” he said. “For our part we, at Laya Healthcare, will do everything possible to ensure that our members have a strong voice from within the industry to champion their cause and to add positively to the national healthcare debate.”

Laya also announced a new cardiac screening initiative today, which will allow members from 12 years and upwards to avail of preventative screening.

It was developed to help identify and prevent heart conditions at an early stage in a bid to prevent Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS).

Apple plans to construct a three-storey office block next to its existing plant in the city.

This will cater for the expansion of its business in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa.

Apple has been in Cork for 30 years. It currently employs 2,800 people in the city and its business is booming.

In the three months October to December last year, revenues in markets serviced by Apple’s Cork plant grew 55% year-on-year.

This growth is that Apple has out-grown its European headquarters at Hollyhill in Cork and more than 400 staff now work out of 30,000 square feet of leased office space in the Owen O’Callaghan re-developed Half Moon Street in the city centre.

Now Apple is expanding in Cork again. Apple’s senior director for Corporate Communications, Alan Hely, has confirmed to RTE News that the company plans to increase its workforce in the city by 500 to 3,300 over the next 18 months. He said the company was “thrilled” to make the announcement.

Jobs Minister Richard Bruton and senior officials in IDA Ireland have been involved in meetings on the project here and with Apple management in the US over several months.

“This development continues the strong trend of investment over the past years in Ireland, in particular from global ICT companies and demonstrates Ireland’s continuing success in attracting FDI additional investment,” commented IDA Ireland’s chief executive Barry O’Leary.

100 new jobs have been announced by the US multinational management consultants Accenture.

100 technology jobs have been announced by the US multinational management consultants Accenture.

The positions are targeted for both graduates and those with industry experience and will be based around the country.

These jobs are on top of an earlier four-year programme to recruit 100 staff announced in November at a research and innovation centre it was establishing. Accenture already employs more than 1,300 people in Ireland.

Accenture, a company to which other business look to for management and technology services and outsourcing, has a global workforce of more than 240,000.

Its international client list includes a majority of Fortune 500 companies, and in Ireland they work with Microsoft, Kerry Group and the Revenue Commissioners amongst others.

Recently, Accenture moved its corporate headquarters to Ireland from Bermuda.

The Irish Times reports that IDA-backed multinationals created 1,350 net new jobs in Ireland in 2010. The IDA’s interim statement for 2010 shows that multinationals supported by the government agency created 10,897 new jobs last year. Chief Executive Barry O’Leary said that about 9,545 jobs were lost in multinationals last year. He said some of the job losses were the result of closures announced in 2009, including that of PC maker Dell. The IDA said it hopes to bring in projects that will lead to the creation of 10,000 new jobs in 2011. It also hopes to bring in investments that will create 62,000 new jobs by 2014.

The Irish Times reports that Japanese medical device company Goodman Medical is to create more than 100 high-end jobs in Galway over the next five years. The new jobs are part of a EUR1.1 million investment by the Japanese company, and the new positions will be in manufacturing, sales and marketing, and research and development. The investment is supported by IDA Ireland.

The Irish Times reports that HP has confirmed it is to create 105 high-tech jobs at its Galway operation. The jobs, which will be in Ballybrit, are based around enterprise data architecture, application development and software engineering and testing. Between 50 and 70 of the positions will be filled immediately. The investment is being supported by IDA Ireland.

According to the Irish Examiner, Irish IT firm PFH Technology Group has acquired Redstone Technology for EUR2.5 million from its British parent company, Redstone. Redstone provides enterprise storage and server solutions to blue chip public and private sector clients in Ireland. The enlarged business will have annual revenues in excess of EUR55 million and will employ 235 people.

The Irish Times reports that online sports betting firm Betfair has announced plans to create up to 100 jobs at a new office in Dublin. Betfair said it intends to open a new data centre and relocate some of its UK customer operations teams to Ireland early next year. The company has already commenced a recruitment process to fill the posts. It said existing staff in the UK would also have the option to relocate to Dublin, but it was not yet clear exactly how many people would be interested in taking up this option.

21st October 2010, Dublin: Europe’s leader in ‘Content on Demand’, GoAdv has marked its rebrand to Populis (www.populis.com) with the opening of its new European headquarters in Dublin today.  The company, which employs over 45 people in Ireland, is also expanding its Irish employee base at the office in Barrow Street, Dublin.

Populis, which has been operating in Ireland since November 2006, delivers up to the minute ‘content on demand’ to web users.  This content from news to guides is crowdsourced from a team of expert collaborators and published through its network of wholly owned and operated websites including Excite Europe, Better Deals, Blogsfere and Nanopublishing.  The organisation has over 18 million unique monthly users across 500 wholly owned and operated websites in 8 languages.

Populis is expanding its Irish operation, with initially additional roles in Content Management, Search Engine Marketing and Administration, in one of Europe’s technology growth hot spots. The European headquarters already counts over 8 nationalities and 10 languages across its team of Search Engine Marketing and online content experts.

Commenting on the rebrand and expansion, John Slyne, Managing Director Ireland and Group CFO, Populis said “We are delighted to celebrate our rebrand to Populis with new offices in Dublin. Content on Demand has experienced phenomenal growth and we needed a strategic base to help us achieve our expansion goals.  This further commitment to Ireland reflects the country’s growing leadership position in pan European digital communications.”

Welcoming the expansion and opening of the new headquarters Barry O’Leary, CEO IDA  Ireland said “As the only major player in the sector to produce content in 8 languages, Populis is a welcome addition to Ireland’s vibrant digital media portfolio and its rapid growth here is testament to the local management and highly skilled and talented staff working in the Dublin HQ.”

“Populis is an excellent example of the type of high growth technology company which IDA targeted under its Horizon 2020 strategy. The addition of Populis to our rapidly expanding digital media sector reinforces Ireland’s growing reputation as the internet Capital of Europe” he added.

About Content on Demand.
Populis takes a scientific approach to content generation with a database of over 16 million key words and a proprietary algorithm to define the hottest content topics of web users.  Once identified matching news, features, guides and comment content is then crowdsourced from a network of professional writers, video producers, expert contributors and editors.  This content is then published across a network of wholly owned media brands and optimized for search traffic via search marketing, social tools and community engagement.  This content is then monitised through partnerships with tier 1 search/contextual providers (e.g. Google, Yahoo) and direct deals (e.g. Expedia, lastminute and eBay).

About Populis
Populis is one of Europe’s fastest growing digital media companies (GP Bullhound Media Momentum 2010) and European leader in the production of multilingual content on demand. Created in 2004 the Group crowdsources, distributes and monetizes over 20,000 items of compelling content in 8 languages per month for a vibrant network of 500 fully owned and operated websites including Excite Europe, Better Deals and Nanopublishing. The media properties generate over 18 million unique monthly users (Source: Comscore September 2010).

Populis is a pan-European company with a team of over 125 working across offices in Ireland and Italy, active in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, US, Australia, Russia and Brazil.

The company has experienced double digit revenue growth every year for the past 5 years, culminating in multiple award wins (Media Momentum, Red Herring 100) and the enviable position as European leader in content on demand, GoAdv’s rebrand to Populis will increase its visibility with an easily recognizable name and identity, while strengthening its space in an increasingly competitive market sector.

The Irish Independent reports that Hewlett-Packard is to create 50 jobs at its base in Co Kildare. HP said it was creating positions for “highly-skilled, multi-lingual graduates” to work as support for Microsoft software programs. HP Ireland’s managing director Martin Murphy said the company could add a further 70 people at a later date depending on the success of the new hires.

The Irish Times reports that shared services centres in Ireland have the potential to create significant new employment, as research from Accenture says that management at 48 percent of them expect to increase their number of employees next year. The research, carried out in association with IDA Ireland and the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, found there were now 140 such centres in Ireland, employing 35,000 staff. Shared services centres typically provide functions such as technical support, finance and accounting, human resources and payroll to their parent organisation in a number of countries.

The Irish Times reports says that Carlow-based TSL Marketing is planning significant growth for the coming year on the back of strong tech markets in central Europe and the Far East. TSL opened offices in Budapest last May and Warsaw this week, bringing its worldwide presence to nine locations. Next year it plans to open new offices in Singapore and Beijing. TSL managing director Mike Kelly expects employee numbers to increase substantially. “By this time next year we expect to have just over 300 people. Most of the jobs will be based outside Ireland — in central Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East,” he said. The company will fund the expansion through its own revenues.

The Irish Times reports that Dublin-based business technology provider Origina is to invest EUR1.1 million in developing a cloud computing service, creating 10 new jobs. Part of the funding will be put towards collaborative research with universities to design the service. The company also plans to seek up to EUR2 million in additional external funding over the next 12 months to support further infrastructure investments and a move into other markets, including the UK. The service is due to be launched later this year in Ireland, followed by the UK early in 2011. Origina will provide ‘infrastructure as a service’.

With the establishment of a new operations centre in Dublin Google is to create 200 jobs here in Ireland immediately.

The new Dublin-based operations centre will be focused on the search engine giant’s location-based products including Google Local and Google Maps.

These new jobs will bring the number of people employed in Dublin by Google to a total of 1700.

“Dublin is rapidly becoming the multilingual internet capital of Europe and Google is proud to be leading the charge on this and further increasing our presence here,” said David Martin, director, Geo Operations for Google in Europe.

Martin said that the Dublin operations centre will take care of its location-based services for the pan-European market and will be developed as a centre of excellence.

“Google Maps displays so much more than the geography of a place, and now incorporates rich data from thousands of sources in different languages from across the world and also includes local business listings.  This operations centre will help to manage these data sources to give Google Maps users even more local information than before,” he added.

Martin explained that the decision to open a European centre for its location-based service was due in part to the fact that increasing proliferation of smartphones and uptake of Google’s own Android operating system meant that more and more people are using Google Maps, its free Sat Nav service for Android, Street View and so on, and the aim is to provide information that is as accurate and up to date as possible.

“The operations centre will be based in Eastpoint Business Park and plans to be fully operational this year. Google is working with local staffing partners CPL and Manpower to recruit and potential employees will be expected to graduates with one or two years experience in their field and strong IT skills,” said Paul Sweetman, director of ICT Ireland.

“This investment by Google highlights the strength of Ireland’s ICT sector, proving Ireland continues to be the location of choice for major multinational corporations.

“The ICT sector is leading Ireland’s Smart Economy with seven of the top ten global ICT companies having a major presence here. In addition to the 200 jobs announced by Google today, over 2,000 new jobs in the ICT multinational sector have been announced since January 2010. In 2009, the indigenous software sector grew by 6pc in export value.”