Facebook owner Meta is to make approximately 490 full-time employees redundant across its Irish operations.
The roles are being cut from a number of teams including finance, sales, marketing, analytics, operations and engineering.
Employees at Meta Ireland were notified on Wednesday they were potentially impacted by a global restructuring which was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year.
In March, Meta revealed it plans to cut about 10,000 jobs globally, just four months after it axed 11,000 workers.
The company said it will comply with Irish legal requirements in relation to redundancy timelines and processes.
Meta, which is also the parent company of Instagram and WhatsApp, said the decision does not impact its “commitment to Ireland”, adding it will continue to be the international headquarters and base for several important company functions.
The final number of redundancies will be determined by a collective consultation processes.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said his thoughts are with the affected staff and their families.
“I want to assure them that we’ll engage with the company to make sure that they’re given a decent severance package or redundancy package which we’d expect all employers to do.”
However, he said while there are job losses across the tech sector, there are “lots of job opportunities too”.
“There’s actually more people working in that sector than there was this time last year,” he said.
Minister for Finance Michael McGrath said the announcement of any job losses is a concern and “deeply regrettable” but added that the sector appears to have grown in recent months.
“When I look at it in the round, and I look at the results of the labour force survey published this morning just in the past few minutes, it does show quarter on quarter, the number of people working in ICT and the tech sector in Ireland has grown by about 4,500.
“So we have a sector now that is considerably bigger than it was pre-pandemic, so that’s good news.
“But obviously there have been announcements in recent months, some of them have yet to take effect, so those numbers may not yet be reflected in the official statistics but we are also seeing jobs being created in the tech sector.”
He said Government is working with individual companies and keeping the issue “under review”.
Mr McGrath said the support will be there to provide help to people losing jobs but added that many of them could find alternative employment “very quickly”.
“It does come at a time when the labour market is really tight.”
He added that the skills and experiences that many of those in the tech sector who have lost their jobs have are highly valued and highly sought after.
About the Author: Jonathan Thomas
