ONE OF Ireland’s leading civil engineering contractors, Roadbridge, has announced a decision to pull out of Ireland “in the short term” due to a lack of available capital projects.

The Limerick-based company, which had a consolidated turnover of €490 million in 2007 and recently completed work on the €660 million Limerick Tunnel project and the M9 Knocktopher to Powerstown motorway, said the decision had been taken as a result of a failure to “secure further work within the Republic of Ireland”.

The company is to make more than 30 staff redundant, while redeploying others abroad.

The decision to pull out of the domestic market, at least in the short term, was not taken lightly, and was described as “disappointing and difficult” by the company, who said the successful redeployment of its long-serving staff was Roadbridge’s “biggest concern”.

“Due to economic circumstances in Ireland at present the company will not enjoy the luxury of work traditionally afforded to the company within the Republic of Ireland in the short term,” said Roadbridge managing director Conor Gilligan.

“Roadbridge is disappointed with its failure to secure further work within the Republic of Ireland in the short term, but we are looking forward to the challenge of executing significant contracts abroad in the immediate future,” he added.

Staff at the company, which directly employs 580 people worldwide, were informed of the decision last week and were offered the opportunity to apply for jobs on other Roadbridge contracts in Poland, Glasgow and Germany.

The firm has managed to redeploy some 360 staff to projects in other countries as a result of securing contracts for work in Oman, Poland, Wales, Shetland Islands and Northern Ireland.

“With our robust order book and our success in foreign markets to date, we see these redundancies as being of a short-term nature,” said Mr Gilligan.

“We continue to tender for all future contracts both within Ireland and in the markets within which we have established ourselves abroad,” he added.

The company began life as Pat Mulcair Civil Engineering in 1967, with Mulcair featuring on the Sunday Times rich list in recent years. His fortune was estimated in April this year to have dropped €2 million to €73 million.

In recent years Roadbridge worked on the Kildare Town bypass and Naas Southern Ring Road, among other capital and energy projects.

It won a tender in February of this year, along with John Sisk Son, for the contract on one of the main links between the M4 and Pembrokeshire in the UK.