About 4,500 staff at Hewlett-Packard's Irish operations will have to wait several months before they find out how its $18.7 billion (€20.6 billion) merger with Compaq will affect them.

The first stage of the integration process will see a new management team in place by the end of May, according to Mr Martin Murphy, Hewlett-Packard's general manager for Ireland.

In the company's first public comment in the Republic since the merger was completed this week, Mr Murphy also played down fears of heavy job losses in Ireland. In an interview with The Irish Times yesterday, Mr Murphy said talk of 400 job losses was "wild speculation".

"Job losses should not be a short-term concern for employees here as there are also a lot of unique operations which Hewlett-Packard has in Ireland," said Mr Murphy. "What we have put in place this week is an integration team for Ireland. They will spend the next few months looking at our whole footprint in Ireland."

Despite the eight-month delay in getting approval of the merger, Hewlett-Packard said this week it would not complete the proposed 15,000 redundancies for nine months. It could take several months for the integration team to finish work at Hewlett-Packard's Irish operations, said Mr Murphy. "Until the legal issues had been decided, we couldn't get under the skin of things so there is no immediate issue," he added.

Although Mr Murphy would not rule out redundancies here, he said cutting jobs was just one method of gaining efficiencies. The integration team would look at a range of areas including its supply deals, infrastructure and its property portfolio, he said.

The combined operations of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq in Ireland employ a total of 4,500 people in printer manufacturing, services, software development, finance and administration.

Both firms pay millions of euro in corporation tax to the Exchequer as they act as finance hubs for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

In the next few months, Hewlett-Packard would consolidate its services division at its Leixlip, Co Kildare campus enabling it to give up a lease on a building in Blackrock, in Dublin, said Mr Murphy. Compaq's services division is on two separate Dublin sites at Clonskeagh and North Circular Road. The challenge was to get everyone in one location, he said.

Despite uncertainty caused by prolonged opposition to the merger by Hewlett family heir, Mr Walter Hewlett, customers remained surprisingly loyal to Compaq and Hewlett-Packard products, said Mr Murphy. But both Dell and EMC had attempted to focus on that weakness to take market share in the storage and PC market, he added.

Mr Murphy said Hewlett-Packard's number one priority was to its customers and the company expected to exceed its financial targets in Ireland this year. The firm is calling its 150 largest European customers this week to specify the impact of the merger on products and customer relations.

Mr Murphy is convinced the merger makes sense and will herald a new period of consolidation in the IT industry.