Facebook owner Meta expected to announce up to 550 job losses in Ireland today

Political sources said that hundreds of job losses at the tech giant are set to be confirmed in the coming hours.

It comes after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar earlier today said that he expects “significant job losses” affecting Meta's Irish operation.

Mr Varadkar told the Dáil that it is important that the tech firm is allowed to make that announcement and engage with its staff and that he wouldn’t say “too much about it here” as it would be unfair and not appropriate.

The company's announcement is part of a global job cuts announcement made in March by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg who said the company's workforce would reduce by around 10,000 people.

“Obviously my thoughts are with the staff who are affected, and their families and I want to assure them that we will engage with the company to make sure that they are given a decent severance package or redundancy package, which we would expect all employers to do," Mr Varadkar said.

He said that workers who are made redundant could receive support from the State in terms of job search and education training “if they need it”.

Despite the news of significant job losses, the Fine Gael leader said the latest statistics from the CSO pointed out that 2.6 million people were now working in Ireland, “more than ever before”, with an increase in the number of people working in the tech sector by 4,000 compared to this time last year.

The Taoiseach was responding to Labour leader Ivana Bacik who told the Dáil that reports of further layoffs at Meta’s Irish operations was “distressing news for so many”.

Ms Bacik said there was a repeated pattern in tech companies whereby employees were hired on masse and then fired in large numbers for “the sake of so-called efficiency”.