One of Ireland’s most prominent home-grown multinational tech companies says it will start laying off staff because of the coronavirus.

Wexford-based Taoglas, which employs 300 people and is one of Ireland’s most prominent ‘internet of things’ firms, says that it is implementing “targeted cost cutting measures”.

Taoglas is a leader in designing mobile and wifi antennas and was co-founded by joint chief executives, Ronan Quinlan and Dermot O’Shea.

It declined to say how many of its 300 staff it will let go, saying the move would be "limited".

“Taoglas is responding to the global Covid-19 pandemic and the effects of its customer temporary factory and operational shut downs by implementing targeted cost cutting measures,” said Charlotte Rubin, the company’s vice president of global marketing.

“Unfortunately, some limited layoffs are a part of those measures. This is the first time there has been any layoffs in Taoglas since it was founded over 16 years ago. Asia operations are fully up and running and European and USA locations have been classified as ‘critical sector’."

Up until now, Taoglas has maintained offices in Ireland, China, Germany, Taiwan and the US cities of San Diego, Minneapolis and Coconut Creek, Florida.

Last year it secured a debt deal worth over €20m from HSBC.

It has committed over €10m to fund acquisitions in recent years, including Dublin-based Firmwave and the US-based firm ThinkWireless.

60pc of Taoglas’s business in the US.

Earlier this week, Taoglas unveiled a service that could alert authorities if large crowds gathered, in contravention of social distancing rules attached to the coronavirus outbreak. Its Crowd Insights platform uses wifi to detect large concentrations of people.

“We believe this will be vital in the days and months to come to allow people to move around safely without fear and to get the economy moving again,” said Mr Quinlan.

“Municipalities and businesses are now required to monitor the density of groups of people in public, to optimise social distancing, to ensure that the virus does not reestablish. With a cost-effective tool to measure, monitor and manage people movement, we’re looking to help to expedite getting life and businesses back to normal.”

Online Editors