WITH three companies confirming that they are about to expand their operations in Limerick, it’s been an exceptionally positive week on the jobs creation front.
Three Ireland is to create 90 new jobs at the former O2 customer call centre in Plassey which will serve as the company’s preferred centre for customer queries and business transactions.
This followed the announcement from energy firm Pinergy that it is about to create 46 new sales positions in the Tipperary/Limerick area in association with sales management company DSM.
Pinergy investors include rugby legend Paul O’Connell and the new jobs come on the back of a major promotional campaign to get households in Limerick city and county to convert to the company’s ‘pay as you go’ payment system for electricity costs.
There will be a further jobs announcement this Friday when Finance Minister Michael Noonan visits the Raheen headquarters of the Kirby Group to mark the firm’s 50th anniversary.
The well-known engineering company has grown since its foundation in Limerick in 1964 to employ more than 600 people today, with substantial operations in Dublin, Galway, Limerick, the UK and Europe, with a further 250 people employed by key subcontract partners.
The Three Ireland move will see the firm increase its Limerick workforce to more than 440 employees.
Ninety permanent customer care roles will be created over the next 12 months in Limerick. Additionally, a number of existing contract staff will be made permanent over the next 12 months.
Three Ireland chief executive Robert Finnegan said the Limerick expansion would bring all customer care roles back to Ireland. He added that a planned €300 million investment in their high speed network would require up to 100 full-time equivalent roles through third party contractors over the next three years.
Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan described the jobs announcement as a “positive reflection on all the existing employees in the call centre in Plassey who have a proven track record of hard work and professionalism”.
“Limerick has demonstrated in recent years its ability to continue to attract jobs in various sectors with a number of multinationals choosing Limerick to establish their operations. These much welcome additional jobs in Three Ireland will contribute to improving our local economy while also helping all those agencies involved in attracting more companies to view existing similar type companies continuing to expand in Limerick,” she said.
Castletroy-based Fine Gael TD, Kieran O’Donnell, said the jobs announcement was a “further endorsement of Limerick as an investment location”.
“It’s significant that Limerick has been selected as the location for customer services for the new combined business, which will have 37 per cent of the Irish mobile market.
“This is a clear testament to Limerick as a good location for investment, and follows recent similar announcements from UPC and others. This emphasises the ability of Limerick to compete at the cutting edge of the provision of these services.
“However it has a bitter-sweet quality to it with the announcement of job losses in retail around the country and headquarter operations in Dublin. I sympathise with those people who will be losing their jobs and hope that they will be able to take up employment elsewhere without too much delay,” he said.
