800 new jobs have been announced with the establishment by the digital television provider, Sky, of a customer contact centre in Dublin.
The jobs will be created over the next two years and recruitment begins immediately.
Sky's customer contact centre in Dublin City will open in August and, according to the company, help it better serve its customers in Ireland. The company is looking to fill positions in customer service, training and human resources.
The company says customer questions are becoming more technical because of ever expanding ways of delivering content including through computers, games consoles and phones.
Therefore it wants to bring more of its customer services in-house and, ensuring that its ''own people deal with the customer issues''.
Currently, enquires in Ireland are routed to contact centres in Livingstone and Dunfermline in Scotland.
The new Dublin site will be Sky's tenth customer service centre, with the others in England and Scotland serving the company's 10.5 million customers. The new jobs are part of Sky's wider workforce expansion which will see the creation of a total of 1,300 Sky jobs across the UK and Ireland over the next two years.
The announcement has been welcomed by the Government as it works on its action plan for jobs, which is designed to make it easier for businesses to create jobs.
"This is great news, and represents a very welcome vote of confidence in our workforce and in the Irish economy by a leading company,'' commented the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton.
BSkyB reports rising first-half profits
British pay-TV giant BSkyB said today that net profits climbed in the first half of its financial year, boosted by rising subscribers, and announced plans to create 1,300 jobs over the next two years.
BSkyB, which was at the centre of a failed takeover bid by its largest shareholder News Corp last year, added that it would launch Internet-based television services later this year as it seeks to attract more customers.
Earnings after taxation advanced 8.4% to £441m sterling in the six months to the end of December, compared with £407m in the same period of the previous fiscal year. Revenues climbed 6% to £3.36 billion in the reporting period, the broadcaster added.
BSkyB added that it now has nearly 10.5 million household subscribers, a proportion of whom pay monthly fees to access its Internet broadband and telephone services.
"It has been a strong first half with progress on all fronts," said chief executive Jeremy Darroch in the earnings release.
"While these are tough times for many consumers, our customers are staying loyal and more households continue to join us. From broadband to high definition, people are choosing Sky for a wider range of products than ever, underlining the transformation of our business over the last few years," they added.
The group also announced that it will launch a new Internet TV service later this year. This will allow customers to download films without a contract or satellite dish and will eventually include sport and entertainment programmes.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation abandoned its bid to win full control of BSkyB earlier this year after a phone-hacking scandal forced it to close the British tabloid newspaper News of the World.
News Corp had in June 2010 bid £7.8 billion for the 60.9% of BSkyB it did not already own. BSkyB, whose portfolio includes the rolling Sky News channel, rejected the 700 pence a share offer even before the bid collapsed.
