The West Dublin disk factory will create 2,850 jobs and will be followed by expansion schemes in five other locations including a hard drive plant in Thailand.
Separately, Big Blue said it will outsource $2 billion of notebook and desktop systems from Taiwan's Acer, to expand its PC output. IBM will start marketing Acer-made machines next year. The deal follows a similar agreement between IBM and Samsung for $2 billion worth of monitors over the next three years.
IBM can be contacted by telephone on 01256-343000.