Outside an Amazon office in Dublin (Smon Roughneen)
DUBLIN — Retailer Amazon will hire 1,000 people in Ireland over the next two years, according to a Monday statement by the country’s official investment promotion agency, IDA Ireland
The jobs are expected to take Amazon’s Irish headcount to 5,000 and are mostly in engineering and technical roles.
“We have seen a surge in demand for cloud services in Ireland and globally, and we are excited to add 1,000 highly skilled roles,” said Mike Beary, Amazon’s country manager in Ireland.
US-based Amazon will also invest in a cloud computing centre due to open in 2022 in Dublin, according to the IDA Ireland statement.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said that the announcement bolsters Ireland’s “reputation as a leading nation in global technology.”
Ireland’s 12.5-per-cent corporation tax, the second-lowest in the European Union, has helped attract US multinational corporations such as Facebook, Google and Twitter.
On July 15, Ireland and Apple, which employs around 6,000 people in the country, won a case at the EU’s General Court after the European Commission sought the repayment of around 15 billion dollars in taxes it said Apple owed.
Foreign investment accounts for around 250,000 Irish jobs, according to IDA Ireland, which on July 8 warned the country faces a fight for investment in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing a sharp downturn.
Recession projections in Ireland range from the EU’s 8-per-cent drop in gross domestic product (GDP) to the Central Bank of Ireland’s 14-per-cent slump.
“We need to get people back to work and to protect and create sustainable jobs,” Martin said on Monday.
