Fears grow for jobs at Meta’s Irish operation amid reports of plans for large-scale cuts

Fears are growing for jobs at Meta’s Irish operation amid speculation the company is set to announce large-scale job cuts across its global workforce.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Facebook parent company Meta was planning to cut thousands of jobs globally as $80 billion (€80 billion) was wiped off its market value in October. An announcement could come as early as Wednesday.

Rumours have been circulating in recent weeks that the company could be seeking to shed up to 1,000 roles from its Irish operations, but sources inside Meta said that figure could not substantiated.

Meta currently employs more than 3,000 people directly in Ireland, with an additional 6,000 people employed at operations across multiple sites including Meta’s international headquarters in Dublin, Clonee data centre in Co Meath and Reality Labs in Cork.

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[ Facebook parent Meta reportedly planning large-scale staff cuts ]

Sources have said a number of planned business trips have already been cut short or cancelled at short notice across different divisions of Meta’s business.

A spokeswoman for Meta declined to comment on reports of planned job cuts. However, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has previously indicated that the company was planning to narrow its investment focus.

‘Smaller organisation’

“In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas,” he said. “So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organisation than we are today.”

It is not yet clear how the Irish arm of the company will be impacted by any planned job cuts. However, one area that could be adversely hit are contractors employed through a third party, a workforce that is designed to be scaled up or down according to business needs.

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Other potential areas that could be hit are recruitment, sales and other support functions.

Meta has also put the brakes on its campus development in Ballsbridge, pausing the fit-out of its Fibonacci Square building as the pandemic pushed staff to a more flexible work environment. The Fibonacci Square building is phase four of the project; Meta is currently completing phase three.

That phase is due to be completed shortly, with the remaining 1,000 staff based in Meta’s Grand Canal Square office set to move to the Ballsbridge campus early next year.

At the end of September, Facebook announced a global hiring freeze for most roles across the company, which also applied to its Irish business.

On Monday evening, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Leo Varadkar met with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland for briefings on the impending job losses in the technology sector.

In a statement issued by his office afterwards, he said that no company has indicated that it is leaving Ireland, and he was confident that all companies would respect employment rights and requirements for notification and consultation with employees.

“As a country we are close to full employment, with high demand for tech, marketing and other skills across all sectors,” Mr Varadkar said. “There is a strong pipeline of new investments from overseas and within Ireland in a range of sectors including tech and in other sectors and we expect many positive announcements in the coming months.”

“At Government level we are focused on competitiveness and ensuring that Ireland is the best place in Europe to invest and grow for the future. We are acting on energy, skills, housing, access to water services, and planning,” he said. “We have never taken our economic prosperity for granted.”

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the Irish economy had “strong resilience” and irrespective of any job cuts this week “opportunities will come again”.

He told RTÉ Six-One: “We have a diversified economy. We have a wide range of jobs created in many different sectors. Of course the technology sector is a particularly important one but we have been through difficulties in the past [at] different times in relation to that industry and other industries.”