MICROSOFT IRELAND has confirmed it is seeking 60 redundancies from its Irish staff as part of a global cost-cutting exercise but is also hiring 40 staff.

In January Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the US firm was looking to make annual savings of $1.5 billion (€1.1 billion), which would include 5,000 staff leaving by mid-2010. The bulk of the job cuts are completed but, in an e-mail to staff yesterday, Mr Ballmer did not rule out further cuts. “We will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and, if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations,” he wrote.

Microsoft Ireland said it would begin a 30-day consultation period with staff in the coming days. “We will continue to evaluate our business to ensure that our investments are aligned to current and future revenue opportunities,” a statement said.

Conor Lenihan, Minister of State for technology, yesterday met Jan Muehlfeit of Microsoft Europe at the EU ministerial meeting in Prague, who assured him Microsoft was committed to a strong research presence in Ireland. While some of the redundancies will be compulsory, Microsoft said it is hiring 40 staff for its European operations centre. The positions are a result of its decision to build a €500 million data centre in Dublin to support its European business.

Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd, its main Irish subsidiaries, recently filed accounts showing a pretax profit of €477 million in the 12 months to the end of June 2008. Last month its parent, Microsoft Corporation, reported fiscal third-quarter revenues of $13.65 billion, a 6 per cent fall year-on-year and revealed it had paid “severance charges” of $290 million related to the reduction in head count. It expects “market weakness” to continue for at least one more quarter. – (Additional reporting: Bloomberg)