Enterprise Ireland companies increased their jobs by a record number last year.
There was an overall rise of 12,000 - with a 7% rise in the South East.
Two-thirds of new jobs were created outside Dublin.
The figures show sectors such as life sciences and digital technology performed well.
Susan Spence is co-founder of SoftCo, which helps firms automate their finances, and says the pandemic helped them:
"We had growth across all our markets last year - if you imagine a company that has lots of locations, has lots of invoices coming into those locations - they needed to automate to get control of that and become far more efficient."
Enterprise Ireland is hoping to create 45,000 new jobs by 2024 and increase exports to 30 billion euro.
Gerald Hurley is CEO of Waterford Chamber and says there's a major talent in the South East:
"It's the larger companies and the areas that the larger employees are getting involved in and there is a major stream of talent in the South East."
