An Opposition TD has said Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke’s comments about recent job cuts at Meta Ireland appear to contradict the company’s messaging.
In response to a parliamentary question from Labour Party employment spokesman George Lawlor, Mr Burke said on Tuesday that IDA Ireland had been “made aware” of the job losses on a call with the tech giant in January.
“The company informed IDA Ireland that the method of identifying the roles of those at risk was to use an internal performance review process,” he said.
Mark Zuckerberg said the cuts were ‘performance-based’ but some employees have queried the legality of the process https://t.co/WmGYKrT0AK
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) February 22, 2025
Mr Lawlor said the reference to the “identifying” of at-risk “roles” is “contradictory to previous statements” from the company.
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Meta has maintained it is not making any roles redundant. If it were, it would have to open up a 30-day consultation period with affected staff and inform the Minister of its intentions to begin making employees collectively redundant.
The Facebook and Instagram owner, however, has not taken either step and has characterised the job cuts as being based on employee performance. Meta intends to shed about 5 per cent of its workforce globally, part of a cull of what chairman and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has described as an acceleration of its natural process of “managing out” low performers during the year.
The Irish Times reported last week that some staff at Meta Ireland have queried the legality of their so-called performance-based dismissals and sought the advice of solicitors.
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“Meta has consistently maintained this is not a redundancy situation and they are going to backfill the positions,” said Mr Lawlor.
“The Minister’s response indicates clearly that Meta was identifying roles for redundancy and not individuals. This reads like a collective redundancy situation and at the very least the Minister needs to seek clarification from Meta on the number of redundancies involved and ensure Meta abide by the redundancy laws currently in place.”
Clarifying the Minister’s remarks, a Department of Enterprise spokeswoman said the response to Mr Lawlor’s parliamentary question “outlined that Meta Ireland informed [the] IDA of a decision by Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that he was speeding up the process in which low performers at the company were being exited globally.
“Meta informed IDA Ireland they were aiming to exit 5 per cent of its current lowest performing employees globally and were to use an internal performance review process to identify individuals likely to [be] impacted by the decision.”
Sinn Féin employment spokeswoman Rose Conway-Walsh said earlier this week that she would raise the matter at a meeting with the company next week.
Meanwhile, the Financial Services Union (FSU), which represents some staff in Meta Ireland, said it is seeking legal advice to “ascertain” whether the company’s actions are compliant with Irish employment law.
FSU head of industrial relations Gareth Murphy said: “This reads like, feels like, and sounds like a collective redundancy situation.”
He said Mr Burke should “fully investigate” the actions of Meta, to ensure Irish redundancy law is “respected” and all conditions and obligations on the company are implemented.
“The Minister cannot sit idly by as employees are treated with complete disrespect and as expendable items by this company,” said Mr Murphy.
