It arrived here only 15 short years ago. But a decade and a half on, without Intel, Ireland's industrial landscape would be virtually unrecognisable. The kudos of the world's leading chipmaker locating its only manufacturing facility in Europe and its largest facility outside the US in Leixlip has no doubt helped IDA Ireland peddle this country as a location for the many other hi-tech investments that have followed. And in a strange way, over the 15 years, the growth and success of the Intel campus in Kildare has mirrored that of Ireland's wider economy. The establishment of European manufacturing headquarters in 1989 heralded the take-off of the Irish ICT sector, followed by the confidence and boom of 1990s and further expansions at the Leixlip plant. Then came the sharp and painful economic downturn that accompanied the new millennium, with the dotcom bomb, the virtual collapse of telecom stocks, 9/11, and the order from Intel corporate headquarters in 2001 to freeze construction work on Leixlip's Fab-24 expansion.
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