Lucent, the US telecoms equipment firm which employs 900 people in Dublin, will shed a further 7,000 global jobs as part of an ongoing restructuring plan.

The firm, which last year reduced its headcount to 62,000 from 106,000 people, said yesterday it could not give a geographical breakdown of redundancies.

Lucent Ireland, which has facilities in Ballsbridge, Blanchardstown, Cherrywood and St. Stephen's Green, has escaped the severe job cuts up until now.

A spokesman for Lucent Ireland said there was an ongoing review of Lucent's business and, at this point, there were no plans to cut jobs in the Republic.

The announcement of significant job losses followed the publication of Lucent's financial results, which show the firm lost $423 million (€479 million) after tax from October to December.

The company is still suffering from the severe downturn in the telecoms market prompted by massive overcapacity and fallout in the dotcom sector.

On a per share basis, Lucent's fourth-quarter net loss of 14 US cents was the same as the year-ago period.

The losses came despite a $523 million dollar gain on the sale of Lucent's loss-making fibre optic business. The result also included restructuring costs of $79 million.

Revenue fell to $3.579 billion from $4.346 billion, the group said. But Mr Frank D'Amelio, Lucent chief financial officer, said it may be over the worst.

"We continue to believe that revenues in the first fiscal quarter of 2002 represented the low point for Lucent sales in the current market downturn," he said.

"For the second fiscal quarter, on a sequential basis, we expect our top line to improve approximately 10-15 per cent and our bottom line [net profit] to improve at an even greater rate."

Lucent focused on its pro forma results, which do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles.