Micheál Martin has said the country will “regroup” and look for more jobs opportunities in other sectors amid shock job loss announcements in the tech sector over the past week.
The Taoiseach also said that the economy has proven its resilience in “bouncing back” from the economic shocks that came with Covid.
And he said that the country has a track record in recovering from previous job loss blows, and will do so again, urging people “not to panic.”
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Mr Martin was speaking after two major tech employers in Ireland, Twitter and Stripe, last week announced hundreds of imminent job losses in the coming weeks.
The situation got worse when fears of a deeper ‘tech shock’ came on Monday morning with reports that one of the biggest employers in the sector, Meta, owners of Facebook, are considering massive layoffs in its 85,000-strong global workforce.
The company, which also owns Whatsapp and Instagram, employs 3,000 people in Dublin.
Speaking to reporters from the COP27 UN climate conference at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, Mr Martin said: “We will consult with all the various companies.
“I’ve been concerned for quite some time in terms of the global economic situation because of the war in Ukraine and the implications across the board, across Europe and across the world, the migration and so on.
“But that said, we’ve bounced back very strongly from Covid-19.
“We do export everything we produce, so what happens globally has an impact on Ireland, so, our challenge is to make sure that… we will engage with the IDA and with the companies.
“We’ve faced this situation before where we consolidate, we look for new opportunities then when things pick up again in those particular sectors.
“There are issues clearly in the whole digital area, we are always concerned where there are potential job losses.
“We always tend to view it with a look, ok, there are realities that we can’t change globally, but how do we deal with this now domestically and how do we regroup and sort of look at, what sort of opportunities are out there in these sectors?
“We’ve done this before, we shouldn’t panic about this, I think we should just understand the realities and see what we can do, first of all, to help the employees, we have been able to in the past in similar situations.
“And we have other areas that are growing, I mean FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) is performing at record levels and it looks like this year is going to be a record year again.”
Meanwhile, Leo Varadkar has warned tech companies issuing redundancies that the Government would be watching them to ensure they adhered to our strict employment laws concerning layoffs.
The Jobs Minister was speaking after a meeting with top IDA officials to discuss the recent spate of reported job losses in the tech sector.
He said: “We have ongoing engagement with major tech employers through the IDA and Enterprise Ireland, and the Government has asked the agencies to intensify this engagement.
“There are well-established statutory processes to protect employees, and we are confident that all national employment rights requirements for consultation and notification of redundancies will be adhered to once decisions on any reductions in employment are made.
“I have asked for officials in the Department and of Enterprise, the IDA and Enterprise Ireland to keep me informed of any developments.”
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