Dozen employees at ‘Irish Daily Mail’ told jobs at risk

DMG Media Ireland, the publisher of the Irish Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, has told about a dozen employees that their jobs are at risk as part of a restructuring of the company.

In a series of one-to-one meetings, employees were encouraged to either accept a redundancy package over the next two weeks or apply for one of five alternative roles within the company.

Some senior editorial staff of the Irish Daily Mail were told that their existing roles were being eliminated as part of this process.

The news group opened applications for about 35 voluntary redundancies early last month. It warned at the time that it could move to compulsory redundancies if sufficient applications were not received.

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Applications from some staff working on digital operations within the company have been rejected. The company is now understood to be seeking to reduce the number of print functions related to the daily newspaper. It is understood three feature writer roles and the role of political editor are among those being cut.

Cost reductions

As well as the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Mail on Sunday titles, DMG Media Ireland publishes the websites Evoke.ie and Extra.ie. Earlier this year, it acquired the parenting site Rollercoaster.ie.

DMG Media Ireland chief executive Paul Henderson told staff on Thursday that all employees who had been accepted for the voluntary redundancy scheme announced on March 1st had been informed, but that the programme had not led to the required cost reductions. As a result, he said the company planned to implement further restructuring over the coming month.

The publisher’s redundancy scheme offers two weeks’ statutory redundancy pay capped at weekly earnings of €600 plus four weeks’ of actual pay per year served, with total service under the scheme capped at 25 years.

The company, which employed 156 staff in Dublin before the redundancies, last month said the cutbacks were triggered by falling newspaper sales and declining advertising revenue.