300 Ericsson jobs to go in Dublin

Ericsson is to lay off 300 workers over the next 18 months. All of the redundancies are to be sought at the company's plant in Clonskeagh in Dublin.

In a statement, the company says that some of its Irish operations will be moved to other low-cost locations as part of its efforts to cut down on the number of locations from which it operates.

Ericsson employs 1,700 people in three locations in Ireland - Clonskeagh and Dun Laoighaire in Dublin and in Athlone.

'This is part of the action being taken around the world to consolidate operations into fewer locations,' commented John Hennessy, Managing Director and Country Manager for Ireland.

'The objective is to safeguard and strengthen the company's operations for the future. It is unfortunate but inevitable that some of our local operations in Ireland would be affected,' he added.

He said the company will provide a 'comprehensive redundancy package and all the support we possibly can to all our our affected employees'.

Ericsson has been in Ireland since 1957 and hosts a number of its 'global centres of excellence' here.

News of the cuts follows the company's decision in January to undertake a worldwide review of its operations. Last month, Ericsson reported lower-than-expected profits and announced sweeping job cuts worldwide amid expectations that it will be a flat market this year.

The world's biggest mobile network maker said it would axe costs of about 4 billion Swedish crowns (€423m) a year to adapt to little or no growth in mobile infrastructure.

The Swedish firm said it planned to cut about 1,000 jobs in its home market. It said the full effect of the savings would come in 2009.

As of December, Ericsson had 78,750 employees, just over 20,000 of whom are employed at its operations in Sweden.