Dell is to create 420 new jobs in Ireland and has announced that it will be consolidating all of its Dublin and Wicklow operations at a single campus. The computer maker is building a new EMEA business centre in Cherrywood, Co Dublin which will link to its existing site at that location.
The announcement follows speculation about the fate of the company’s Cherrywood site. On a visit to Ireland in September, company founder and chairman Michael Dell had dropped broad hints that the company would seek to consolidate its operations in the east of the country into a single campus.
According to a statement from Dell, the move to the purpose-built site will facilitate current recruitment and the ongoing growth of Dell’s Ireland-based sales, marketing and technical support operations, which will now all be located at the Cherrywood campus. This will also become the location for the company’s sales and marketing operation currently run from its Bray office.
Staff based in the Bray facility are scheduled to transfer to Cherrywood from May 2005 and this process is due to be completed within the year. The company has had a presence in Bray for the past 11 years. The Cherrywood facility already in place includes an EMEA enterprise expert centre and an EMEA marketing studio.
The consolidated site will be designated as Dell’s EMEA business centre, which the company said was in recognition of the continued growth and development of the Irish-based business and in support of the strategy to continue to locate high-value EMEA services in Ireland.
The 420 new jobs will be in place by 2007. In total, the consolidated Dell operation at Cherrywood will house a staff of 1,650. The single campus facility has an additional capacity for a further 350 employees, the company said.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment said that Dell’s investment would further develop the existing operations from a mid-value centre, serving predominantly the UK and Irish markets, to a high-value EMEA business centre.
By Gordon Smith
