Intel’s Irish staff may face job losses following announcement

There are fears of job losses among Intel’s 5,000 Irish staff after the US computer chip maker said it would cut 12,000 jobs, or 11 per cent of its global workforce, due to falling sales of personal computers.

The company is one of the biggest multinational employers in Ireland, with 4,500 employees at its base outside Leixlip, Co Kildare, a further 200 at a research and development facility in Shannon, Co Clare, and hundreds more in Cork.

The California-based company said it would make voluntary and involuntary job cuts to find annual savings of $1.4 billion (€1.2 billion) as it moves away from its traditional business of selling chips used in personal computers to more profitable products, such as processors for data centre computers.

A spokesman for Intel Ireland said last night there was no information available at this stage on the likely impact on the company's Irish employees.

The company has said it will inform staff affected by the cuts within 60 days.

Falling shares

Shares in the tech giant fell 2.6 per cent in late trading on the US stock market after the company lowered its forecast for revenue for the year.

Intel said it would record a pretax charge of $1.2 billion to cover the cost of the restructuring in the second quarter of the year.

The company has invested more than €9 billion in Ireland since establishing a base in Kildare in 1989, including €3.6 billion over the past five years upgrading its Leixlip operation, the company's biggest in Europe.