TELEFONICA, THE parent of mobile operator O2, has announced it will create 100 jobs in Dublin over the next 2½ years.
The move is part of a €25 million investment over five years by the Spanish telecoms group to create a pan-European human resources function.
Telefonica’s European people services centre will support employees in O2 subsidiaries in Ireland, Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The creation of the shared services centre was supported by IDA Ireland, whose chief executive Barry O’Leary said it was the kind of investment targeted in its Horizon 2020 strategy published earlier this year.
O2 had only considered placing the centre in countries where it had an operation and the final decision was between Dublin and Berlin, according to Ian Ruddy, Telefonica Europe’s people services director.
He said a number of factors played in favour of Ireland, including the attractiveness of Dublin as a city that can attract “highly skilled, highly educated, multilingual” staff from around Europe, as well as the support provided by IDA Ireland. He said O2 executives also met with Google and Hertz to discuss their experiences of investing in Ireland.
“There’s an innate focus on hospitality and doing the right thing for the customer,” said Mr Ruddy, who is originally from Newry.
Mr Ruddy said the centre would invest heavily in technology to better serve Telefonica’s 27,900 European employees in their native language.
He said the move would have an impact on employment in other O2 subsidiaries in Europe but the biggest impact would be on outsourcing partners who already run parts of this business.
He said Telefonica globally was looking at the new centre “with a lot of interest” and he hoped that it was the first of many investments the group would make in Ireland.
Speaking to reporters before the event, Mr O’Leary said that the 100 jobs being created at Telefonica was “a good decent-sized project”. He said IDA Ireland expected to make three further significant jobs announcements in the next two weeks.
