MORE THAN 300 jobs are to be lost in Cork and Sligo.
In Cork, a wireless technology company announced it was making 150 people redundant less than a year after Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan had announced the company was going to recruit 145 extra staff.
Option Wireless, based at the Kilbarry Industrial Estate on Cork’s northside, announced that it was going to significantly downsize with the loss of 150 jobs bringing jobs losses at the plant in the past year to more than 200.
The plant is Option Wireless’s primary customisation, logistics and fulfilment site and has been responsible for adding value to the basic product by customising it with firmware and software.
The firm’s Belgian headquarters confirmed yesterday that as part of a restructuring programme, designed to effect savings of €20 million, the activities carried out at the Kilbarry plant will be primarily transferred to lower-cost regions in Asia.
In Sligo town, a call centre taken over by new owners just five months ago is to close in six months with the loss of 160 jobs. The Tiscali contact centre in Finisklin, part of the Talk Talk group, a UK supplier of phone and broadband services, announced the planned closure yesterday.
Talk Talk took over the Sligo business last June. Last night it said: “As processes improve and fewer customers call us, we have taken the decision to consolidate and create centres of excellence enabling us to serve our customers better.
“The result is that work currently undertaken in Sligo will be moved to other locations, including Waterford.” The Sligo call centre first opened three years ago when it was operated by a company called Toucan which promised 300 jobs but just over half of those materialised.