TESCO HAS BEGUN discussions with departmental managers in its Irish stores over possible redundancies.

The retail giant confirmed this evening that this was in relation to a small number of roles and that discussions are at an early stage.

It did not give an indication as to how many roles could be affected, or at what stores.

In a statement, Tesco said:

With over 2.5million customer transactions per week and 15,000 employees, we keep the structures of our business under constant review to ensure that we offer the best possible service to customers.

It added that following a recent review:

a small number of roles in our stores are changing in order to ensure that we have more colleagues on the shop floor helping customers. We are in early stage discussions with some of our departmental managers in stores to see if any wish to be redeployed to other roles or whether any would wish to apply for voluntary redundancy.

The company said that at this early stage, it “can’t speculate on final outcomes”.

Yesterday, Tesco had to downgrade its expected profits over an “overstatement” in its finances to the tune of €300 million. The company did not state that the redundancy discussions were in any way connected to this.

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