The new R&D centre will be located in Galway in the west of Ireland and is expected to employ 200 new technical and engineering jobs at graduate level and above over the next three years.

The investment will be undertaken by Cisco subsidiary Cisco Internetworking (Ireland) Limited and is supported by IDA Ireland, the government's investment promotion arm.

“This investment is a superb win for Ireland coming as it does from a truly global household name of the calibre of Cisco," Martin commented.

"It is a further significant increase in the benchmark by which other global companies can judge Ireland’s abilities to successfully support cutting-edge highly sophisticated technological R&D and of our ability to provide the required numbers of the most knowledgeable and skilled graduates for to-day’s global businesses," he added.

Cisco is one of a clutch of IT firms which have announced major investments in Ireland recently, Digital River and Google being the latest examples.

“The Galway centre will firmly embed Cisco, the world’s leading networking company, in Ireland, where it will undertake research at the very heart of Cisco’s new growth strategy, a key part of which includes its Unified Communications business," continued Martin.

"Cisco has been a major target company for IDA Ireland for quite some time and the location of this R&D centre here was achieved against strong competition. Cisco is also to investigate the opportunities for collaborative R&D with both industry and academic partners in Ireland,” he explained.

Charles Giancarlo, Cisco Chief Development Officer added: "Today the majority of Cisco’s business and customers exist outside of North America. To remain responsive to the communications needs of our customers, we are expanding our significant investment in development around the world."

"We view Ireland as an excellent area to establish our new R&D facility in the area of Unified Communications, both because of the positive business climate and because of the established talent pool," Giancarlo concluded.