Meta Cuts 700 Jobs at Dublin Contractor, Again—Here's Why

A company called Covalen, which handles work for Meta (formerly Facebook), announced in April 2026 that it would lay off more than 700 employees at its Dublin office. This is the second major round of cuts in six months. The company began formal layoff talks on April 27, following an earlier round in November 2025 when 400 jobs were at risk and around 200 workers left.

Covalen is owned by an Irish company called CPL and does outsourced work for Meta—mainly jobs like reviewing content and customer support. The latest cuts suggest that most of Covalen's Dublin operation could be affected.

Why Is This Happening?

Meta is spending enormous amounts of money on artificial intelligence. Think of AI as software that can learn and make decisions without being explicitly programmed for every scenario—like the difference between a calculator that only does math it was taught, and a system that can reason through new problems.

Meta has said it will cut its total workforce by 10 percent while doubling its spending on AI, potentially reaching $135 billion in 2026, according to The Journal. That's a huge shift in where the company's money goes.

In March, Reuters reported that Meta was planning to cut as much as 20 percent of its workforce, driven by two goals: paying for expensive AI systems, and using AI to do work that humans currently do.

Meta is building a new AI model called Avocado, but reports suggest it hasn't performed as well as expected. That may have influenced decisions about cutting jobs across contractors as well as direct employees.

What the Union Says

The Communications Workers' Union criticized the cuts, saying that workers shouldn't pay the price for Meta's strategic shift toward AI. The union's point was that these job losses aren't because Covalen had operational problems—they're because Meta decided to spend money on AI instead.

This tension is showing up across the tech industry. Companies are shifting resources away from jobs that can be automated—like content review—and toward building AI systems. For contractors like Covalen, whose business depends on having lots of people do these jobs, that's a serious problem.

A Pattern We've Seen Before

The broader context here is worth understanding. We have seen this kind of shift happen before, when cloud computing took off in the mid-2010s. At that time, big software companies started automating jobs that used to require people, and they poured money into building new computer infrastructure instead. There's usually a period of job cuts before the new technology actually delivers the promised gains.

What's happening now with AI looks similar, but it's happening faster. Companies with enough money are willing to spend heavily on AI infrastructure and cut contractors now, betting that AI will eventually do the work those contractors did—and do it cheaper and faster.

What This Means for Ireland

Ireland has built an economy partly around hosting technology company jobs, especially contractor and support roles. Meta, Google, and other tech firms have large operations in Dublin. Covalen's cuts are a significant loss for the city's job market.

As AI gets better at things like content moderation and customer support, there will likely be fewer jobs for people doing that work. However, Meta is also expanding research and engineering jobs in Ireland—the higher-skilled work that builds AI systems.

The real question is whether new technical jobs will outnumber the contractor positions being cut. Ireland's government has invested in attracting technology companies through tax breaks and workforce training. That bet is still paying off if the country can attract the engineering work—but it's less valuable if tech companies only bring the jobs that will eventually be automated.

Looking ahead, how quickly this transition happens in Ireland will tell us something important about the broader technology industry: it will show us how fast and effectively AI can really replace human workers in operational roles.