Around 400 jobs were at risk at Covalen in November. It is understood that roughly 200 have left the company.

A Dublin-based outsourcing 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 commenced consultation in relation to “potential redundancies within its Dublin operations”. It said that it is “engaging directly and proactively” to support the affected teams.

Operated by parent company CPL, Covalen offers content moderation, AI training and back office admin services for a variety of industries, including finance, utilities and tech.

Alongside its Dublin headquarters, Covalen also operates in Limerick. According to its website, it employs more than 2,500 – up from the roughly 2,000 that SiliconRepublic.com had previously reported.

The latest layoffs come just months after 400 Covalen jobs were at risk of being cut in November. It is understood that around 200 workers have left the company as a result of these redundancies.

Workers carried out industrial action outside the company’s premises in Sandyford Business Park in January over what they described as a “lack of meaningful engagement by Covalen management” regarding, among other things, improved redundancy packages.

In a statement yesterday (27 April), the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) said that Covalen workers would not “pay the price for Meta’s AI ambitions”.

The Union has asked Covalen for direct negotiations, fair redundancy packages, and an audience with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, TD, and the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Peter Burke, TD. The group also wants Meta to drop its six-month “cooling-off” period for other Meta vendors.

“We know the real reason behind these cuts. Meta is shedding thousands of jobs worldwide, cutting staff and tearing up vendor contracts simply to pay for its massive new Artificial Intelligence bills,” said Ian McArdle, CWU’s Deputy General Secretary.

Last week, Meta said that it is cutting 10pc of its global workforce. In a memo, the company’s chief people officer said that the cuts would help “run the company more efficiently” and allow it to “offset the other investments” it’s making.

Affected employees are set to hear from the Facebook-parent on 20 May. It is unclear how many of Meta’s 1,800 direct employees in Ireland would be laid off.

Meta isn’t 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 has cut 30,000; Atlassian, 10pc of its workforce; and Snap, about 16pc.

According to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi, more than 90,000 tech employees 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 has found that AI adoption in Ireland is likely to lead to job losses, especially concentrated among highly educated workers.

This, it said, is expected to lead to increases in income inequality in the “short to medium term”, driven by job displacement among those who’ve lost their jobs, potential wage increases for those who become more productive using AI, and increased returns to capital investment.

Meanwhile, last week, the Taoiseach said that there could be a “significant upheaval in the jobs market over the next decade”. Officials have been asked to “identify the implications and impact of AI on the world of work”, he added.

“We urgently need real government intervention around AI-related job losses, not just ‘proposals’ and assessments. Tech companies cannot be allowed to discard hundreds of workers overnight to fund AI without strict government oversight,” McArdle commented.

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