INDEPENDENT NEWS & Media (INM) has told staff at its Independent Directories classifieds subsidiary that it plans to scale back the business and implement redundancies in a bid to stem losses at the company.
Based in Citywest, Independent Directories publishes five local directories annually and employs 50 staff. As many as 30 workers could be made redundant, although some staff might be offered redeployment.
A spokesman for INM said that the directories will move to a two-year cycle from January 2010 and will no longer be printed annually.
He said this would move the business to a “level appropriate to the current advertising environment . . . [and] enable the company to focus on smaller scale, targeted directories over the next 12 months”.
Editions of the Independent Directoryare produced for Dublin, Cork, Carlow/Kilkenny, Limerick/Clare/Tipperary, and Galway/Mayo. The directories carry an A-Z of classified ads and are delivered to about 1.3 million homes and businesses in Ireland.
INM said a consultation process with staff and their representatives on the reorganisation would begin next Monday.
The Independent Directoryhas been in existence for more than 20 years. INM chief executive Gavin O'Reilly cut his teeth there in 1993, running the business for about two years.
This is the latest in a number of measures taken by INM recently to place the heavily indebted listed media group on a sounder financial footing.
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