Technology company Cara Group will shed 10 per cent of its 320-strong workforce as part of a restructuring plan following a €33 million (£26 million) management buyout three months ago.

The technology solutions and payroll firm, which has operations in Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork, will cut 19 jobs from the Dublin office. The rest will come from the regional operations.

Cara said its "group transformation programme" would involve splitting the group into two separate companies - information technology solutions and payroll outsourcing.

The payroll division will merge with its British subsidiary, bringing the number of staff in that unit to 96. It hopes to increase that to 150 by 2002.

"We are effectively going to demerge the two companies and create separate legal entities," managing director Mr David Little said.

"We have expansion plans for both businesses but we have very aggressive plans for growing our payroll business in particular," Mr Little said.

In anticipation of an upswing in the technology sector, Mr Little said he intended to be lean and as "match-fit" as possible.

The company will offer a number of early retirement and severance packages to staff in affected areas. Cara has already sold its training division, Cara Training, to Sure Skills as part of its plan to shed non-core operations.

The Cara announcement concludes a week of particularly heavy job losses. On Thursday a total of 500 jobs were in danger following decision by Xerox and GlaxoSmithKline to close part of their Irish operations.

This came in the wake of computer firm Dell's announcement on Wednesday that it was shedding a further 125 jobs in addition to last month's 200 job cuts in its Irish operations and the closure of Wexford Weaving with 120 job losses.