Job losses at Intel will be more than 200

Job losses this year at Intel's factory in Leixlip will be significantly higher than the 200 voluntary redundancies the US multinational announced this week.

In fact, significant numbers of staff who work for Intel via third parties have already been let go.

Intel makes extensive use of vendor companies - who supply the high-end machinery that operates its manufacturing processes - to provide staff.

An Intel spokesman said the company employs 5,150 people and that by the end of the year, this would have fallen to just under 5,000.

Twelve months ago, the company said there were "5,500 employed on site, both directly and indirectly".

The Intel spokesman said the reduction of 350 staff over the last year was due to a reduction in numbers at third parties and a "smaller action" by Intel itself last year.

Last year, Intel chief executive Paul Otellini announced a significant cost-cutting programme at the semiconductor giant which included shedding 10,500 jobs worldwide.

Earlier this summer, Gerry McDonagh, an employee of Applied Materials and also an independent member of Kildare County Council, wrote to local newspaper the Liffey Champion, claiming that up to 800 staff could be let go from third-party suppliers this year.

The Intel spokesman described such a claim as "mischief making". He said that due to the major building work taking place at Leixlip over the last number of years, there was anywhere between 1,700 and 2,500 construction staff on site. A number of these stayed on after the Fab 24 and Fab 24-2 plants had been completed to finish incidental construction tasks.

He said these staff had never been included in any of the figures given for employment at Leixlip. He also said the company does not provide a breakdown of how many staff are employed directly for the firm, and how many work for third parties.

However, it is believed that about 20 per cent of the Leixlip workforce are employed by specialist suppliers. The largest of these is Applied Materials, while others include Tokyo Electron, Brooks Automation and Novellus. A number of these firms have offered staff in Leixlip positions overseas.

Some members of staff said they were aware of vendor companies cutting back significant numbers of staff and handing over responsibilities to Intel staff. The bulk of the job losses have been at Ireland Fab Operations, a facility which was formed from the merger of Fab 10 and Fab 14, the first two factories that Intel built in Ireland. This facility is only now capable of producing lower-end products such as computer memory and faces competition from low-cost locations in the Far East.

Although Leixlip received two major investments in recent years - Fab 24-2 alone cost $2 billion (€1.42 billion) - more recent investments by Intel have gone to Israel and China. One source said that if 600 were let go at Intel this year, the firm could easily be looking to hire a similar number next year if the company decides to build a new facility here.