Yet only 20 job seekers had registered their details on the site by the end of last week. Indeed, local leaders involved in Cork's economic development say the main beneficiaries of Motorolatrained workers are likely to be other multinationals and not homegrown firms hungry for talent.

So far the only Irish company to express an interest is Havok, a Dublin-based digital media company, which has said it hopes to hire up to 30 former Motorola employees.

No Cork firm has made a similar announcement.

One of the ambitions behind attracting knowledgeintensive multinationals to Ireland was to create economic spillovers into the indigenous economy. But after more than 20 years of Motorola in Cork - not to mention Apple and EMC - the expected spin-offs and supply and support chains have failed to materialise.

Regional planning guidelines developed by the South West Regional Authority in 2004 found a disappointing lack of activity in the southwest's indigenous industry, with less than 20% of exports coming from locally-developed companies. Forfas figures likewise have shown a stagnation in exports from Irish companies - while multinational exports have grown each year for two decades.

SWRA director John McAleer attributes the problem to over-reliance on foreign direct investment and poor utilisation in existing research and development assets at UCC and Cork IT.

"There is still a huge dependence in the region on multinationals, " McAleer said.

"There is a lot of research happening but it's not going into indigenous companies."

The SWRA is trying to change this through the European Commission-sponsored 'Drive for Growth' project, which aims to leverage regional knowledge bases for the benefit of local businesses. McAleer is now trying to see "how [Drive] could be of use to people coming out of Motorola".

"They have the capacity to be assimilated in local firms but the multinationals have tended to replace each other's workers all along." he said.

McAleer's assessment was reinforced by Cork's deputy lord mayor, Michael O'Connell, who expressed confidence that "the responsible government agencies will make sure the skills [of former Motorola employees] are available to businesses coming onstream", including Amgen, which is opening in Carrigtwohill next month. He had little to say, however, about the capacity of local firms to benefit from the influx of highly-skilled workers into the labour pool, suggesting their transferable skills are more suited to running an EMEA headquarters than building local enterprises.

The SWRA has raised the issue with the American Chamber of Commerce, which represents most of the local multinationals, in order to get assurances that the big firms will integrate with and support the indigenous sector, but nothing concrete has emerged from the meetings.

One hope is that firms in the National Software Centre in Mahon might absorb some of the Motorola lay-offs. "It's an obvious port of call for people coming out of Motorola, " said McAleer.