Oracle will shed 105 jobs at its shared service centre in Dublin over the next 10 months to create greater efficiency at its Irish operations, the firm said yesterday.
The US software giant will try to shed jobs through natural attrition but may have to make some employees redundant in Dublin.
The restructuring follows a surprising announcement last month by Oracle of a slump in software licence sales, which sent its shares down sharply. It also follows concerns raised by Oracle executives that the cost of doing business here is increasing, and a trend at the corporation to move lower value jobs to India.
Despite promising to hire an extra 250 people in Dublin when the Taoiseach opened a new office in January, 2002, Oracle's workforce will now fall below the 975 staff it employed in 2002.
Mr Nicky Sheridan, managing director Oracle Ireland, said yesterday that total job numbers at Oracle's Irish operations after the restructuring would be around 950, 50 below the current figure of about 1,000 staff.
He said that fewer staff were now needed at the Oracle shared services centre because of increased efficiency due to the automation of certain processes.
He said redundancies were a possibility but he thought most of the positions could be lost through natural attrition due to the high percentage of foreign workers at the services centre.
An IDA spokesman said the Government's official employment figures showed Oracle had only ever officially committed to deliver about 950 jobs in Dublin.
He said the Government agency had also always expected that Oracle would reduce its staff at the shared service centre after it had got fully up and running.
Just 200 jobs at Oracle's shared service centre are budgeted to receive grant aid from the Government, said the spokesman.
Oracle's shared service centre, which at its height employed about 340 staff, manages the firms internal IT and administrative functions across the European region from Dublin. Staff were told at a meeting earlier this week that this figure would now drop to about 225 employees.
Oracle, which makes database software, posted a 28 per cent increase in quarterly profit to $440 million last month. But a 7 per cent drop in sales of new software licences hurt its share price.
In a recent interview with The Irish Times, Mr Sheridan, warned that Oracle would not choose Dublin as a location for its shared service centre if it had to make the decision now, rather than five years ago in 1998.
"Although I do think we are still an excellent place to locate strategic functions," he said, "They [Eastern European states] are a little cheaper than us and although I think we have made progress in education, I still don't think this is sufficient."
Oracle's Irish operation is one of the biggest technology companies located in the State. It made a profit of $427.1 million(€382 million) in the year to the end of May 2002. The operations generated revenue worth $1.94 billion during the same period, slightly down on the same period in the previous year.
