Despite an economic slowdown, Internet payment company PayPal (News - Alert) is having a good run. Now, the online payment company is looking to expand its overseas operations despite the fact that it recently lost president Scott Thompson to Yahoo.

PayPal will be opening a 1,000-employee center in Ireland, thanks to a government grant for expanding operations. The subsidiary of eBay (News - Alert) had decided that it will add a second PayPal center in the border town of Dundalk. This particular base of operations is expected to slowly grow the staff, ramping up to the 1,000 employees over the next four years. PayPal already has a center in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown that currently employs as many as 1,500 people.

PayPal is just one of the more than 600 American high tech companies that Ireland has considered over the last decade. The Emerald Isle clearly feels that the way out of its flat economy is through the tech sector and this agreement with the online payment company seems to hint that that approach is beginning to pay off.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenney has actually doubled down on this particular initiative that has been in effect since the 1980s, and outside companies seem to be a bit more receptive to it. Ireland is leaning heavily on the notion that multinational companies like PayPal will boost an economy that currently leans heavily on exports. Four-fifths of Ireland's goods and services are currently exported with a large portion of those exports heading to Great Britain and the United States. 

Louise Phelan, who is the vice president of global operations for PayPal in Europe, says that the company will be hiring about 200 staff members by July in order to operate the new headquarters in regards to customer support, sales, finance and compliance.