About 100 jobs to be cut at Penneys headquarters in Dublin

By Cate McCurry, PA

Penneys parent company Primark is to cut about 150 jobs in Ireland, the UK and the US, the company has confirmed.

Around 100 redundancies will be at the retailer's international headquarters in Dublin.

It means around 7 per cent of the company’s 1,500 staff in Dublin will be impacted.

The planned 150 job cuts are in people and culture, finance and procurement.

The move is connected to a decision to outsource some of its support activities to a third party.

It is understood the third party is Accenture in Mumbai.

As is required by law, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke and Minister of State for Small Business and Retail Alan Dillon have been notified of the company’s collective redundancy plan.

A Primark spokesperson said: “As we continue to grow internationally, we need to evolve our operating model to best support this ambition.

“We’re exploring how resourcing via external partners could help support our operations so that we can focus our own resources on what we do best.

“As part of this, we are now proposing that a number of support function activities move to a third party and we are beginning a collective consultation.

“This unfortunately will impact a number of Primark colleagues primarily in our head office operations.

“While this is all about setting us up for future success and continuing to offer great products at great prices to our customers, these are not decisions we take lightly.

“We understand how difficult this news is for those colleagues affected and we’ll be working to support them as best we can.”