Facebook is to create 200 additional jobs in Dublin.

The announcement brings its total Irish workforce to 1,500.

The Social Media giant, based in the so-called Silicone Docks in Dublin, said the full-time roles in sales, engineering and online operations will be filled by the end of the year.

The company also confirmed it has extended its facilities in the capital so that it could now house a workforce of 2,000.

Gareth Lambe, the head of Facebook Ireland, says Ireland is now a vital part of Facebook's global work.

He said: "Some of these are involved with Facebook's business globally, for example our safety and community operations team which looks after the trust and safety of all the people who use Facebook.

"Another example is our database engineering team, who is instrumental in making sure that Facebook works seamlessly for the 1.95 billion people who use Facebook every month."

As part of the expansion, it has opened a Facebook Partner Centre, the first of its kind outside the company's global headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

The centre focuses on Facebook's apps and services as well as its longer term investments in connectivity, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Earlier this year, the company announced it was starting to build a new data centre in Clonee, Co Meath - its second in Europe and first in Ireland.

Facebook opened its first office in Ireland in 2009.