About 400 jobs were at risk at Covalen in November. It is understood that around 200 have left the company.
A Dublin-based company that works on Meta projects is laying off 700 workers, just days after the tech giant announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs.
The contractor, Covalen, has confirmed that it has begun consultations in relation to “potential redundancies within its Dublin operations”. It said it is “directly and continuously engaged” in support of affected groups.
Operated by parent company CPL, Covalen provides content moderation, AI training and back office management services to a variety of industries, including finance, utilities and technology.
Alongside its Dublin headquarters, Covalen also operates in Limerick. According to its website, it employs more than 2,500 2,500 people – up from 2,000 2,000 previously reported by SiliconRepublic.com.
The latest layoffs come just months after 400 Covalen jobs were threatened in November. It is believed that around 200 employees have already left the company as a result of these layoffs.
Workers staged industrial action outside the company’s premises at Sandyford Business Park in January over what they described as “a lack of meaningful engagement by Covalen management” regarding, among other things, developing sales packages.
In a statement yesterday (April 27), the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) said Covalen workers will not “pay the price of Meta’s AI ambitions”.
The union has called for direct talks with Covalen, redundancy packages, and an audience with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, TD, and Minister for Business, Tourism and Employment Peter Burke, TD. The group also wants Meta to reduce its six-month “cooling off” period for other Meta vendors.
“We know the real reason for this decline. Meta is shedding thousands of jobs worldwide, cutting staff and tearing up vendor contracts just to pay its new Artificial Intelligence bills,” said Ian McArdle, Deputy General Secretary of the CWU.
Last week, Meta said it was cutting 10pc of its global workforce. In a memo, the company’s chief people officer said the cuts will help “run the company more efficiently” and allow it to “complete other investments” it is making.
Affected employees are expected to hear from Facebook-parents on May 20. It is not yet clear how many of Meta’s 1,800 direct employees in Ireland will be made redundant.
Meta is not alone in its decision to cut its workforce in response to AI. In recent months Block has cut 4,000 jobs; Oracle, about 10,000; Amazon cut 30,000; Atlassian, 10pc of its employees; and Snap, about 16pc.
According to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi, more than 90,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 so far.
A joint report published by the Economic and Social Research Institute and the Department of Finance this month found that the adoption of AI in Ireland is likely to lead to job losses, particularly for highly educated workers.
This, it said, is expected to lead to an increase in income inequality in the “short to medium term”, driven by job displacement among those who have lost their jobs, potential wage increases for those who are more productive through the use of AI, and increased returns on capital investment.
Meanwhile, last week, the Taoiseach said there could be “significant upheaval in the job market over the next decade”. Officials have been asked to “identify the implications and impact of AI in the world of work”, he added.
“We urgently need real government intervention on AI-related job losses, not just ‘proposals’ and experiments. Tech companies cannot be allowed to shed hundreds of workers overnight to fund AI without strong government oversight,” McArdle noted.
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