THE job losses of 2,700 worldwide announced by ICI yesterday will not affect the approximately 165 workers employed by the multi national here.

Dulux Paints Ireland Ltd, which includes HGW Paints Ltd, Dublin and Cork and Autocolour in Cork, is a subsidiary of ICI.

Mr Frank O'Byrne, director of Dulux Paints Ireland, said workers here would not be affected.

A spokesman at the London headquarters of ICI said the job losses would occur in the explosives, paints and acrylics sectors. Spread around the globe they did not amount to a very large number of job losses.

About 300 to 400 jobs in Britain were included in the figure, the spokesman said.

The announcement by ICI surprised the City. The company's shares plunged 17p to 761p well down from the past year's 959p high on the board's interim statement accompanied by cautious comment of hopes of "modest recovery" in most markets next year.

The retrenchment programme would cut ICI's cost base by £400 million by the end of next year rather than the end of 1998, as planned earlier this year. Interim figures detailed a 28 per cent slump in profits to £367 million before charging restructuring costs of £137 million. Turnover rose 4 per cent to £5.3 billion. Chairman Sir Ronald Hampel said the results reflected subdued conditions in world chemical markets and "the impact of sharp price reductions in some areas of industrial chemicals".

Trading profits earned on industrial chemicals took a nose dive, collapsing £177 million to £121 million under the impact of substantially lower prices in polyester intermediaries and eroded margins in the tioxide and chlorine sector. The industrial chemicals setback masked good progress in downstream businesses where paints and materials improved profitability in difficult markets.

Three months ago, ICI directors predicted the group's problems would be resolved by recovery in demand in the second half of this year. Although the board still believes the present difficulties in the market place remained a "pause" rather than a downturn in the economic cycle, directors now merely stale there was a chance of modest growth in all major markets in 1997.

Despite the profit setbacks and postponed recovery hopes, directors were lifting the interim dividend by 8.7 per cent to 12.5p.