LinkedIn latest tech company to unveil new Dublin campus

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Microsoft’s LinkedIn became the latest technology company to establish a new campus in Dublin on Friday when it signed a 25-year lease to add three adjacent office blocks to its new European headquarters.

The social network for professionals said last June that it would increase its Irish-based workforce to 2,000 from 1,200 over the next year as it moved into a new 14,000 square meter (150,000 square feet) head office by the end of 2020.

LinkedIn agreed to add the remaining 40,000 square meters of office space at the Wilton Park development in central Dublin, the campus’ landlord IPUT, the largest owner of offices in Dublin, said in a statement.

The move provides the U.S. technology company with enough capacity to grow its headcount by more than 4,000 workers, the Irish Times reported. Microsoft separately employs 2,000 people elsewhere in Dublin.

Ireland is the European hub for a number of major technology firms. Facebook signed the largest ever office lease in Dublin in 2018 with plans for a new 57,000 square meter campus while Google bought a 37,000 square meter development earlier that year, to add to its other offices in the city.

The expansions by some of the world’s biggest companies come as new global rules are considered on how and where big internet firms pay tax that could test multinationals’ commitment to Ireland where they pay a low 12.5% corporate tax rate.

The Irish state agency competing to win foreign business said this week that there was no indication that companies were thinking differently about Ireland based on what tax reforms may emerge.

IDA Ireland reported that employment by multinationals rose 6% year-on-year in 2019, almost three-times the rate across Ireland’s fast-growing economy. Foreign companies now employ almost 250,000 people or just over one in 10 Irish workers.