Dublin IKEA to open on July 27

IKEA’S first store in the Republic will finally open for business at the end of July, the furniture giant said yesterday.

The Swedish retailer announced July 27 as the opening date for its flagship Dublin outlet — around seven months later than expected because of the M50 upgrade.

A condition of the superstore’s planning permission was that it could not open until works on the Ballymun section of the traffic-clogged motorway was finished.

Garry Deakin, store manager, said securing an opening date had become a burning issue for management.

“The company offers excellent working conditions and exciting career opportunities and our immediate task now is to recruit the full complement of people so that everyone will receive IKEA’s extensive training programme and be ready and prepared to welcome our first customers on July 27 next,” he said.

The store had been in talks with the National Roads Authority (NRA) in recent months to decide on a date for opening.

Road chiefs had been concerned an influx of shoppers could cause further traffic problems to an already clogged M50.

At 30,500sq m, IKEA Dublin will be one of the Swedish retailer’s flagship stores and will include a 550-seater restaurant, a bistro, a Swedish food hall and creche.

IKEA said 500 jobs and an extra 50 indirect positions in home delivery, kitchen installation and the creche will be created.

About 55 senior positions have already been filled and recruitment for the remaining 445 will take place in two phases, beginning immediately with the hiring of 50 supervisor and specialist positions.

The huge jobs boost comes as dole queues rapidly rise around the country with more than 3,200 redundancies so far this year.

Ikea opened its first store on the island in Belfast in December 2007.

The company has 292 stores in 36 countries worldwide.