Blow to Irish IT market as Dell fires 250 employees

US giant Dell has decided to lay off 250 employees at its branches in Dublin and Limerick, Western Ireland. Known as a place favored by large international corporations to establish their European headquarters, Ireland has begun to lose some of its lure because of increasingly high salary costs and what some EU companies have called excessive bureaucracy.

Dell, which established its business in Ireland in 1990, now employs some 4,000 people there and the 250 who’ve been made redundant belonged to the sales, marketing and client relations department.

The Irish trade unions entered negotiations with the Government a week ago over salary increases. The Government tries to freeze salaries at national level arguing that salaries over the past six to eight years became too high, placing Ireland above the average of the big EU-5 – England, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.