Six engineers are being made redundant at Lucent Technologies, the telecommunications group which was spun off from AT&T last year. The six will depart from the end of this month, and all are understood to have found work elsewhere.

The six engineers designed application-specific integrated circuits (ASICS), and had been offered similar work in other Lucent operations in the Netherlands and in the United States. However, they opted instead to take what Mr Joe Lyons, managing director, described as a "separation package". More than 350 people work in the Irish operation, mainly in software engineering and cable manufacturing. The operation is increasing its work in the area of GSM cellular telephone technology.