Donegal set for 117 call-centre jobs

A Scottish-based call-centre company will create 117 jobs at the Gweedore Business Park in Co Donegal.

A Scottish-based call-centre company will create 117 jobs at the Gweedore Business Park in Co Donegal.

Contact4 also confirmed yesterday that it chose Co Donegal ahead of a number of other locations, including Estonia.

The company will start recruiting immediately, and will be ready to occupy recently-modified premises by September 1st.

The overall investment is expected to exceed €2.75 million, with Údarás na Gaeltachta providing employment, training and capital grants.

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News of the jobs comes less than a week after US firm Unifi Textured Yarns announced it was ceasing operations in Letterkenny with the loss of 300 jobs.

Contact4 director Mr Jim Park said in Gweedore yesterday that it was company strategy to develop dedicated call-centre operations employing 100 to 150 people in rural areas. In larger centres there could be difficulties in keeping down high staff turnover levels.

"We believe that small pockets of well-trained people will be a success," he said, adding that they could provide "the correct people to fulfil our service levels and demands".

The firm is also stressing that it will offer competitive salaries, with permanent contracts after three months.

Preferring to describe the firm as being "a contact-centre operator" rather than "call centre", he said it was operating at the high end of the call and contact centre market, and winning business because of its growing reputation for quality and an ability to install new operations for customers extremely quickly.

This jobs boost for west Donegal is being interpreted as a turning point in the fortunes of the Gweedore Business Park where employment levels have dropped by over a third in recent years.

The chairman of the Údarás na Gaeltachta board, Mr Liam Ó Cuinneagain, said 19 months ago that the board and its executives had sat down to draw up an action plan to develop new technology and knowledge-based enterprises rather than traditional manufacturing businesses.

The Minister of State for the Environment and Local Government, Mr Pat "the Cope" Gallagher, stressed the importance of providing a fibre-optic link and broadband connectivity at the Gweedore Business Park.

This is Contact4's first significant expansion beyond its Glasgow base where it employs 400 people.

It offers customers such as the UK's Inland Revenue and British Gas "inbound" and "outbound" campaigns in areas such as telesales, customer win-back and retention, appointment setting, customer satisfaction surveys, help desks and consultancy.

Local Fine Gael TD Mr Dinny McGinley described the announcement as a "ray of hope" for the region which has suffered company closures in recent years. He also expressed the hope that the announcement would mark the "turning of the corner" for Gweedore Business Park.