Guidant Ireland has announced that 10 of the company's 1,050 staff in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, are to be made redundant.
The jobs will be lost as part of "a corporate-wide management action to offset the decline in the company's worldwide coronary stent business", the company said yesterday.
The announcement comes just five weeks after the medical technology giant unveiled major expansion plans that will double its workforce in the coming years. However the company said this latest development won't affect those expansion plans.
It also said there are no plans for a further reduction in the Clonmel workforce at this stage.
Guidant is to create 1,000 extra jobs in Clonmel, with recruitment to commence in the middle of next year. Five hundred jobs will be created by 2008, and a further 500 jobs will come on stream as the operation develops.
On Wednesday the company said it was undertaking a corporate-wide management action to offset the decline in its worldwide coronary stent business.
Guidant will record a pre-tax restructuring charge of $50-$70 million in the third quarter of 2004, which includes severance, benefits packages for affected employees, contract termination costs and other related costs.
"These actions will establish expense levels for continued near- and long-term profitability of the company," said Mr Ronald Dollens, president and chief executive of the corporation.
"These decisions enable us to maintain our strong commitment to both our research and development and sales distribution capabilities in order to aggressively participate in the implantable defibrillator market, and to advance our two drug eluting stent programmes."
He said Guidant's Clonmel facility currently employs approximately 1,050 people.
The company expects the action to result in a reduction of approximately 10 positions at the factory.
He stressed that Guidant's plans to expand the Clonmel factory remained on track and will not be affected by this recently announced management action.