Mark Zuckerberg outlined the measures in a memo after indicating that his company would do things differently following the election of Donald Trump

Ireland looks set to be included in a new round of layoffs by Meta, which is to get rid of 5pc of its staff.

The news, first reported by Bloomberg, was sent to staff in a memo by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

A spokesperson for Meta in Ireland, which employs over 2,000 people, was unavailable to respond to queries on the matter. Previous Meta job cuts announcements have applied across international divisions, while Mr Zuckerberg said that locations outside the US would also be included this time.

Anne O’Leary is head of Meta in Ireland.

"I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Mr Zuckerberg said in the memo.

"We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle with the intention of backfilling these roles in 2025.

"We won’t manage out everyone who didn’t meet expectations for the last period if we’re optimistic about their future performance, and for those we do let go we’ll provide generous severance in line with what we’ve provided with previous cuts.

“We’ll follow up with more guidance for managers ahead of calibrations. People who are impacted will be notified on February 10, or later for those outside the US.”

The job cuts move comes shortly after Mr Zuckerberg’s volte face on content moderation after the election of Donald Trump, with the Meta CEO telling podcaster Joe Rogan that the new Trump era is a “tipping point” for him, culturally.

The company regards these staff departures as “non-regrettable attrition”, a term that describes a departing employee as neutral or beneficial to the overall health of the company.

The move comes after Mr Zuckerberg announced that his company would be rolling back its enforcement of hate speech protection rules, a move popular with Donald Trump’s Republican party but likely to set the company on a collision course with EU regulatory bodies, including the European Commission and Ireland’s Coimisiún na Meán, which enforces large tranches of European content moderation law on social media giants.

Mr Zuckerberg criticised fact-checkers as “biased” and said that the company will adopt a system similar to Elon Musk’s ‘community notes’ system on X.

He said that the “trade off” for doing this is that Meta will “catch less bad stuff” but will also “reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down”.

It was not immediately clear what the move means for Meta’s Irish headquarters, which employs over 3,000 people.

Mr has become increasingly critical of Europe, saying that it has become a difficult place for tech companies to grow or do business. The company’s global policy chief, former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, left the firm last month.

In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Mr Zuckerberg said that the EU is “screwing” US tech firms by using fines on Meta and other companies as “tariffs” on crucial US interests and said he hopes the incoming Trump administration will fight them so that American companies can “win”.

Meta has been fined over €2bn in Ireland in data privacy sanctions over the last three years by the Data Protection Commissioner, on behalf of the EU.

Reporting on:independent.ie