Hundreds of jobs for Cork in Voxpro and Bons Secours hospital

By Eoin English

Hundreds of jobs will be announced in Cork today as outsourcing company Voxpro and the private Bons Secours hospital announce separate expansion plans.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny is due to visit the headquarters of the rapidly growing Voxpro in Mahon before visiting the Bon Secours hospital for the two announcements.

Voxpro is owned by husband-and-wife team Dan and Linda Kiely (pictured) and counts Google, room-letting site Airbnb, and Google-owned thermostat firm Nest among its clients.

It is set to increase its workforce significantly, possibly adding several hundred jobs to its existing workforce of 850.

Voxpro has grown from a small paging company with six staff based above a shop in Cork City to one of the country’s largest providers to multilingual tech support and business outsourcing services.

The company, which has a large multilingual support centre in Mahon, as well as operations in Dublin and San Francisco, reached its previously announced target of 850 staff ahead of time earlier this year.

It has also previously stated its intention of breaking the 1,100 staff mark.

However, against the backdrop of a rental and housing shortage crisis, the Voxpro chief executive, Dan Kiely, has flagged problems with finding suitable accommodation for the firm’s growing staff numbers, and expressed concerns about securing more office space in Dublin to meet the company’s ambitious growth plans.

The company currently has vacancies for a range of customer service and technical support roles for people with Russian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian language skills.

Later, Mr Kenny will visit the Bon Secours Hospital on College Rd where he will officially open its medical assessment unit, which has treated some 4,000 people since it became operational last year. However, the hospital is also expected to announce that work on a multimillion extension will begin next year.

The project is expected to provide work for hundreds of construction workers, with recruitment of dozens of extra medical staff expected once the new facility is operational.