The Republic’s economy “is dangerously dependent on a handful of tech giants” and they know the Government is frightened they will pull investment and move jobs elsewhere, Labour leader Ivana Bacik told the Dáil on Tuesday.
Her remarks came after Meta last week cut up to 350 jobs, about 20 per cent of its Irish workforce, as part of the latest round of job losses that will see it shed thousands of roles worldwide.
The number was significantly higher than the initial 10 per cent expected, causing alarm in Government.
During Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil Bacik said recent lay-offs in the tech sector are “causing huge stress and anxiety for those receiving redundancy notices”, for their colleagues and for affected communities.
RM Block
She mentioned the cuts at Meta and said more broadly “the IT sector indeed has shed more than 20,000 jobs in the past year alone here.”
Bacik said that the “tech oligarchs” are “dressing this up” as “modernisation” and “flattening teams” saying this was “awful language when they’re talking about people’s livelihoods and people’s lives”.
[ Meta Ireland staff shrinks 50% from Covid peakOpens in new window ]
She added: “Flattening companies really means throwing staff to the wolves to satisfy shareholders and inflate share prices.”
She also claimed that “multibillion euro corporations led by Trumpian cheerleaders in Silicon Valley are using AI [artificial intelligence] as cover for years of over-hiring and for ruthless cost-cutting.”
Bacik said Ireland’s labour laws are “too weak” and that tech companies “know how vulnerable Ireland is”.
Rents and evictions soar as house price inflation slows
“Our economy is dangerously dependent on a handful of tech giants and they know your Government is frightened of them, afraid they’ll pull investment, afraid they’ll move jobs elsewhere,” Bcik said.
“So we are in a permanent game of chicken and the biggest losers are the people now fearing for their futures.”
Bacik said her party is calling for a “serious industrial strategy to ensure that Ireland is more than just a host for multinational profits.”
She said there is a need to “start cultivating indigenous Irish enterprise and innovation to develop a domestic start-up boom in the AI and tech sectors”.
She also said “stronger collective bargaining rights”; “stronger protections for workers facing redundancy”; and “serious investment in education, in retraining, and upscaling,” is needed.
“Above all, we need a Government who will stand up to the tech billionaires.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin responded saying the economy was “continuing to grow significantly” and “employment has been fairly consistent, even year on year.”
“we have a very robust and resilient employment story made up of SME sectors as well as multinationals.”
He spoke about how smaller Irish companies work with multinationals and have become capable of “supply into very sophisticated operations.”
Martin said the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector does need to be developed and “we do need to do better at scaling up companies”.
“Quite a lot of Irish companies have scaled up on the backs of having originally won contracts with big multinationals,” he went on to say.
Martin insisted there is a “healthy ecosystem” while adding: “we do need to invest more” and that “the skill side is key to AI”.
He said AI would “change the world of work, and we shouldn’t be blind to that, and we need to prepare for that”.
Martin also said the International Monetary Fund had “identified Ireland as one of the top countries in terms of AI-skilled population and AI-skilled workforce” and also insisted Ireland’s labour laws were strong.
