A TOTAL OF 170 new jobs have been announced by broadband company eir and pharmaceutical company BioPharma.
Telecoms company Eir is hiring 100 staff to join its team involved in the rollout of high-speed broadband across the country.
The new positions will include poling crews, cabling technicians and fibre splicers.
Separately, BioPharma Engineering is creating 70 new jobs at its Dublin and Cork offices over the next three years.
KN Network Services – a supplier to eir – will recruit the 100 staff required. They expect to fill most of the roles, which will be based throughout the country, in the next three months.
Eir have already recruited 50 apprentices this year, and the company has committed to recruiting 300 apprentices over the course of the broadband rollout, starting in the coming months.
Carolan Lennon, Managing Director at open eir, said the partnership with KNNS is a critical component of the company’s broadband investment programme:
“eir has embarked on the largest telecoms investment project of its kind in Ireland,” said Carolan Lennon of ‘open eir’.
“To date, we have spent close to €400m alone on our high-speed fibre broadband rollout programme.”
Lennon said that KNNS is rolling out broadband to rural communities “by recruiting staff from rural Ireland”.
She also said eir is investing more in rural broadband than any other country.
Legal challenge
Damien Gallagher, the managing director of the KN Group said: “KNNS employs over 1,500 people throughout Ireland and sees at close hand the importance of high-speed broadband to rural communities.”
Eir say that have provided access to high-speed fibre broadband to 1.6 million home to date, and have committed to connecting a further 300,000 rural premises before 2020, using the company’s network of 1.5 million telephone poles.
They have, however, launched a legal challenge to their legal requirement to provide basic phone services in rural areas.
The firm say their plans will bring the number of homes and businesses with access to high-speed broadband to 1.9 million premises, roughly four out of every five homes and businesses.
The Government has separately promised high-speed broadband throughout most rural parts of Ireland under a five-year plan.
Graduate jobs
Separately Minister of Jobs Mary Mitchell-O’Connor officially opened the new Biopharma Engineering (BPE) offices in Dublin today.
The Irish engineering firm said it will create 70 new skilled graduate jobs over the next three years, based in their Dublin Biopharma offices in Westland Business Park on Willow Road, Dublin 12, and in their Cork headquarters at the NSC Campus in Mahon, Cork.
“Biopharma Engineering is a great example of an Irish company that has excelled nationally and internationally in its market,” the minister said.
Biopharma Engineering was founded a decade ago by John O’Reilly and Richard Holohan and already employs 80 people, having doubled its workforce over 18 months.
“Our company has delivered capital projects worth more than €500 million for our clients and we continue to scale in terms of markets, capabilities and ambition,” founder John O’Reilly said.
Stephen Hughes, Manager, Construction and Cleantech, Enterprise Ireland added: “The reputation of Ireland as a supplier of high-end engineering services to the world’s pharmaceutical industries has been built over time through high levels of investment and continues to grow.”
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