UP to 80 jobs could be lost at the Blanchardstown operations of US networking company 3Com over the next few months.

The company is seeking to cut between 50 and 80 jobs through voluntary redundancies which will see the workforce at Blanchardstown reduced to 950. These cutbacks come after the loss of 60 jobs at the plant through voluntary redundancies in the months of March and May.

"All of the reductions will be through the voluntary package and the response so far would indicate that we would confidently expect to achieve that," said a spokesman for the company.

The cutbacks are part of a plan announced by 3Com Corporation to outsource its high-volume server, desktop and mobile connectivity products to Flextronics.

However, the spokesman said the Dublin operation would benefit from the company's decision to locate all its other manufacturing in Blanchardstown from manufacturing plants in Santa Clara, California and Singapore.

In May, 3Com said it was planning to cut 3,000 jobs globally.