Dublin is seeing its share of tech and services investment too, with a recent investment from Colgate-Palmolive — maker of Irish Spring products, among others — in a new Global Information Technology Center for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. The center will employ 30 high-caliber people conversant in SAP systems.
      In July 2003 interviews with Site Selection, Genzyme officials lauded the assistance of the Ireland Development Authority in helping the company renovate a former eyeglasses factory in Waterford for the manufacture of Renagel tablets. Plans back then called for the payroll to reach 125 by the end of 2003. But in January 2005, with the payroll at 200, the company announced a further investment in the plant, expecting to hire 50 more and to complete a 110,000-sq.-ft. (10,219-sq.-m.) facility for formulating and filling biological proteins and enzymes.
      In the company's guidance for 2005, Genzyme's CEO and chairman Henri A. Termeer indicated that the company's commitment to manufacturing investment was helping it achieve its improvements in gross margin. In addition, the company will invest a total of $490 million in R&D in 2005, a 30-percent increase that nicely complements a year-on-year rise in revenue of 39 percent.
      Elsewhere in Waterford, the water supply that gave the city its name was also crucial to a new plant decision involving another marketable substance. In early 2004 came a $49-million investment from Diageo Global Supply for the manufacture of the "essence of Guinness," the key ingredient in the hearty drink, which will be exported from the facility to all Guinness plants in the 50 countries where the drink is produced. The chosen site in Waterford, now operational, has been involved in brewing for more than 200 years.
      The biggest ongoing investment story in Ireland involves Intel. In this case, Ireland's legendary accommodations for business have raised the ire of EU regulators, who blocked the application of the country's $320-million grant for Intel's proposed $1.8 billion worth of fab expansions in Leixlip. According to published reports, a separate, $94-million grant is still passing muster with the EU, but company officials indicated initially that all projects are under review in light of the bigger grant's coerced withdrawal.
      Then, in early April, new Intel CEO Paul Otellini, in testimony before President George W. Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, said the company would have to spend at least $1 billion more to build a fab in the U.S. than in Europe, indicating that Ireland's 12.5-percent tax rate, among other global deal sweeteners from such countries as Israel, Malaysia and China, was among the crucial factors driving company investments.
      The EU scare didn't prevent Intel from hosting the world's largest chip companies at a major conference in Dublin in early April, however. Nor did it frighten off data storage company Engenio, which in April announced a 95-job expansion at its global operations and supply chain management center in Cork City, where the California company made its initial Irish investment in 2000 with a manufacturing and test site. A release from the company stated, "The Cork location gives Engenio access to an excellent communications system with Europe, the Americas and Asia. With key customers and other storage-related companies nearby and University College Cork's technology emphasis, the location is ideal for Engenio's expansion."