INTEL IRELAND has denied there is any delay to the $500 million (€345 million) refurbishment of its facilities in Leixlip, Co Kildare, which is currently employing 850 construction staff.

“There is no change to our plans for Fab 14,” a spokesman said, referring to the factory on the Leixlip plant that is being refurbished in advance of a new manufacturing investment. He also confirmed that the 200 technology jobs announced in January in relation to the project had already been filled.

Construction work began on the refurbishment of Fab 14, one of the older factories on the Leixlip campus, at the start of the year.

The lead contractor is DPS Engineering, a specialist project management and engineering company. However, subcontractors who contacted The Irish Times yesterday said they had been informed the project was being delayed by up to 12 months.

The Intel spokesman said the company had a policy of not commenting on the activities of its contracting firms. “In a project with a duration of two years there are various demands for different skills at different times,” he said.

Fab 14 closed in 2009 with the loss of 300 jobs but at the time Intel management said the factory would be made ready for any future investments the company decided to make in its Irish operations. In January, Intel Ireland general manager Eamonn Sinnott said the company was investing an initial $500 million to upgrade the manufacturing facility in advance of a decision as to what manufacturing line would be built there.

Mr Sinnott described that decision as a “watershed” for the local operations.

Intel’s Irish management team have been lobbying hard for the parent corporation to invest in a new manufacturing facility at Leixlip. With Intel approving $500 million to prepare the site for an upgrade, it was believed such an investment was imminent.

Although no formal decision had been made to produce a new line of computer chips in Leixlip, Mr Sinnott said the US corporation would not be investing such a significant sum of money if it did not expect a return on its investment. The last major investment in Leixlip was the $2 billion put into building and fitting out the Fab 24-2 factory in mid-2004.

Intel, which is the largest maker of computer chips in the world, employs close to 4,000 staff in Leixlip.