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GOOGLE HAS CANCELLED its plan to lease a 202,000 sq feet office space in Dublin’s docklands, a spokesperson has confirmed.
The Irish Times reported in October 2019 that Google had entered talks to rent the Sorting Office, a seven-storey office block being developed in the Dublin docklands area.
A spokesperson for Google told TheJournal.ie: “After much deliberation, Google has decided not to proceed with leasing the Sorting Office.
“We are grateful to Mapletree for all their work with us, and wish them well in the successful letting of this excellent office building. We continue to invest in our Irish operations.”
Mapletree is a real estate company headquartered in Singapore.
Bloomberg, which first reported the story this evening, said the space can accommodate up to 2,000 workers.
Google employs 8,000 people in Ireland. The company said in July that most of its employees will be allowed to work from home until July 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 202,000 sq ft office space is a former An Post site that has been “transformed” into a modern commercial development, the property development company behind the site, Marlet, said.
It will have a roof garden, a gym and over 300 bike spaces, according to its website.
Google’s main headquarters in Dublin is located on Barrow Street in the city centre area.
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Working from home is totally the way to go.
@Ann Experiment: it is ya if you are very selfish…no jobs for cleaners, people in shops around offices etc…also what about young people working from home in their parents house? Great way to socialise, how about people who’s only social life is via work? If its easy to work remotely why not just outsource your job to someone in India? You’ll make it easy for that to happen
@Wheresmyjumper: very true.
But some people never see the bigger picture.
Sure I’m grand I’m at home and then their job is out sorced to India and then uups
@Wheresmyjumper: I’m sure the first customers buying cars were also very selfish when it came to the loss of business for smiths too.
@Colm A. Corcoran: so you don’t see any problem with (a) making it very easy for our current jobs to be outsourced to India (b) huge job losses in areas that support business facilities (c) the social isolation of single people getting up from bed to a desk in their bedroom, working on a computer for 8 hours and then going back to watch telly from their bed…repeat..repeat..without any personal interaction? Or is all this ok because you are married with kids and working from home suits you so nothing else matters
@Wheresmyjumper: the workforce in Ireland are valuable to these companies regardless of the space they’re working in? Proficiency in English, standard of education, time zone all factor in. If they could outsource to India without losing substantial quality they would have already. Also, single people have lives? They finish their work day and then go out and see their friends and family, partake in their hobbies? Not everyone just logs off and goes to the telly.
@Karl Harvey: lots don’t, lots of people only have work, and with participation in sport dropping after school for boys and non existent with girls now we want them to work from home? So they’ll have no social circles, but its ok because it suits the lucky ones who already had good craic in the office in their 20′s but are now 40 married with kids and selfish
@Wheresmyjumper: This is a totally backwards notion that society should be held back from progression in order to maintain societal roles that are effectively redundant.
Shops need to get online and deliver where possible if they want to survive, some retailers in Ireland are still living in the last century.
@Rochelle: covid suits you, everyday you want to not open things. Why stop at offices? Colleges and schools can all go online too, that way you could go all your life never leaving your home, meeting people good or bad thats sooo last century, get everything delivered including our coffins to finish off our miserable lonely, uncaring existence…I love progress
@Wheresmyjumper: or maybe there is a model that rejuvenates towns all over Ireland with connected remote shared offices with facilities building up around them. A distributed workforce that gets better quality housing, standard of living and facilities maybe
@Wheresmyjumper: We’re living through a housing crisis and if Covid has showed us anything, its that the capital city is top heavy with commercial properties – it was a ghost town for months. There’s give and take with everything but to call someone selfish for advocating working from home, that beggars belief.
@PeterC: Eleanor Rigby
Died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie
Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
@Wheresmyjumper: spot on here,
@Wheresmyjumper: spot on here,
@Wheresmyjumper: Step in from the ledge, mate. You’re adding 2+2 and getting 10. I dont think anyone is advocating for the ridiculous extremes you appear to have found yourself fighting against.
@Wheresmyjumper: agree with you totally. Also it’s not the future. People already want to be back in the office.
A lot of the people WFH suits are socially awkward.
@PeterC: not really it’s a mindset. Most people don’t want it 100%.
Offices don’t want it 100% so it won’t happen. Wait and see.
@Karl Harvey: yep. I also spend a lot more in my local community supporting small local businesses.
@Wheresmyjumper: whoooa. stay away from what ever your on mate your paranoia is through the roof .
@Wheresmyjumper: yes and very isolated some of my family working from home find it tough going missing interaction with people and colleagues. Also local businesses shops etc suffer
@Ann Experiment: Not everyone works in an office.
@Ann Experiment: LOL, Just how low is your IQ? unfortunately my arms are not 30 km’s long to fix the medical manufacturing equipment that hospitals are screaming for.
@Ann Experiment: So someone from india can also do your job from home then?
@Ann Experiment: I agree with you Ann. I don’t know why some people on here are so salty.
@Wheresmyjumper: Who pee’d in your cornflakes?
WFH isn’t for everyone but have you considered that it provides opportunities & possibly even more jobs. More people being able to work from rural locations could rejuvenate towns and villages around the country. Anecdotally during the past few months some shops in commuter towns have seen a big rise in business.
Money wasted on commuting can be spent in small businesses rather than wasted on an inefficient semi-state.
There’ll be social issues initially but then people will get to know their neighbours & develop a better work life balance as they settle into a new routine. The country has been too Dublin centric for far too long and anything that releases that pressure valve is good.
As for outsourcing, they already do it in a big way.
@Wheresmyjumper: those who work from will still drink coffee etc.. but it will be in the local shops where they live. There will be a redistribution of spend from the major city centres to more urban and rural areas. There will be little or no nett loss to the economy except to the commercial property owners and is that a bad thing.?
@The Grand Nagus: Outsourcing of jobs work both ways, Irish people can get jobs based in other countries without having to leave the country.
@Joe: Some people may be socially awkward, and what? Other people may just not particularly like the majority of the people they work with and would rather not spend 7hrs+ around them everyday.
@Karl Harvey: that’s right, India is waaaay cheaper but quality is a problem
@Ann Experiment: I have been working from home for about 5 years now and it has its pluses and minuses. The biggest minus is not having people around you for a bit of banter. I do get lonely at times as I live alone too. I’m lucky that I work my own hours so if it gets too much I just stop and go off to a mates house or into town for a coffee if they’re all at work. If I had the choice I’d like to be in an office for half the week and home for the rest.
People are talking about job losses, which was never said. I would suggest this is more the fact they feel they can move a percentage of their workforce to remote jobs around Ireland and don’t need such a big costly investment in office spaces.
I hope this shows developers their prices are not as competitive now and start moving into making more homes available instead endless expensive office spaces.
@Richard: the knock on effect will make a huge difference to our already flailing economy. These big office blocks provide a lifeline to a large number of small businesses and generate jobs in retail, services, hospitality etc. We’re snowballing towards a depression that will take years to get out of
@Anne Marie Devlin: do you not think that we will enjoy a regeneration of our small towns and villages? My routine WFH is similar to when I’m in Dublin city centre. However I save money and the local coffee shop is getting my custom.
@Anne Marie Devlin: we technically just entered recession today
@Anne Marie Devlin: I disagree. Others have already commented that it is an ideal location opportunity to repurpose commercial real estate to residential housing. And make our cities more affordable and liveable
@Anne Marie Devlin: I don’t know about you, but I am spending more in my local town than I was back in Dublin city center. No doubt some businesses there might see the gap of the new customers but I bet more money is going to be spent around the country.
@Richard: don’t think so. I think it’s more likely that they are going to scale back on recruitment. Spending power is going to be hit as a result of Covid.
They’d be crazy to sign up to a lease now given the uncertainty in the world.
Most people will be back in the office once Covid ends.
@Peter Walshe: no it was reported that in the 2nd quarter of this year the economy cotracted by 6%. Understandable as the country was in lockdown. A remarkably small percentage considering that the majority of the population was meant to be in lockdown. Now that the majority of businesses have reopened with the largest lifting of restrictions on the 29th June, the 3rd quarter should see an improvement
@DeWitt: WFH long term will see many jobs moved out. Why would a company pay Dublin salary for someone not using a city centre office?
Work from anywhere goes both ways.
@Anne Marie Devlin: so much less traffic and polution in our cities.
@Anne Marie Devlin: small businesses can’t afford the rents in large office blocks in Dublin
@Joe: I know a lot of people who are hoping a mix of WFH and office will be the way forward
@Gordon Walsh: yes exactly. A mix virtually nobody wants to be 100% home based and this means offices won’t shrink that much as they will still need significant capacity.
A lot of offices already had remote working availability with many not taking it up at all
Let’s get over the dramatic comments. People going to a work place is an old value that exists from the factory model. Many modern jobs are skill based, where an employee can do their job anywhere with a computer and internet access. Companies are realising that offices are an expense they can live without and achieve the same results.
@Wreck Tangle: What about the utility service providers downgrading their “customer services” online and by phone, because their employees are now working from home? What about the state services doing exactly the same? Why are the services downgraded with unrealistic waiting times to either speak to a human or type to a bot? Why are the HSE admin staff sitting “working” at home on full pay? HSE spits out the same excuse. Can they, like the ones on the front line putting theirs and their family’s lives at risk to save others, get up off there effin @rses and get the people who are waiting months and years for a first time app or those who havent got an app for a checkup in month’s to be seen to by a specialist to possibly save their lives?
@RiainOg: that’s a complely different situation to what I commented on..
Just watch it happen in slow motion. The a**e is going to fall out of Dublin commercial property. All these Tech companies no longer need expensive offices when everyone is setup and working from home.
@great gael of Eire: you mean arse. Spell it out
@great gael of Eire: Watch the arse get up off the expensive arm chair and move to a very cheap and very affordable asian three legged stool. Been watching it in slow motion a while now for a few years, only stools like yourself will accelerate it. But sure, progress and all, its great Ted! These are small, and those are far away, springs to mind when comments likes yours are made.
@great gael of Eire: except they won’t all be working from home. Impossible to build corporate culture, relationships etc remotely. People want flexibility not 100% home working very few if any surveys so far have shown people wanting to never go back to the office.
@RiainOg: yes remember how Fruit of the Loom upped sticks and relocated to Morocco!@@! Similar could happen with the multinationals.
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: There’s a huge difference between a T shirt factory in Donegal and support services for tech multinationals supporting EMEA operations
This is the start of all the tech business pulling out of Europe because they will have to start paying their proper tax bills.
@james cullen: taxes are for the little people only didn’t you know?
@james cullen: Best piece of fiction I’ve read in a while!
Time to provide proper broadband to the 500,000 in a much quicker timeframe. It’s only taken 15 years so far, for a policy first discussed in 2005!
This is the start of the big move out for all the tech firms because of the digital tax that’s coming. Apple will be next then Microsoft. If we thought it was bad before we haven’t seen anything yet.
@james cullen: You still don’t know what your talking about.
@Fred the Muss…: ha ha it doesn’t seem to stop him!
Oh no! Now where will they exploit?
Another blow to the economy especially in a recession. I’m sure Ireland has become a much less attractive place for companies.
@Anne Marie Devlin: it really hasn’t but keep fuelling the hysteria. Absolute recession lover.
@Anne Marie Devlin: Based on what evidence?
@Anne Marie Devlin: I’m not sure how one company, that already owns tons of buildings around Dublin city centre, deciding not to take a lease on an additional office block, while they are in the process of building 3 new office blocks at the end of barrow Street, constitutes a blow to the economy.
@nazi killer: I’m a recession hater, but it’s obvious our economy is in free fall. No arts, no sports, no tourism, no international student etc income. Retail has mainly moved online which does not benefit the country very much. Many people on covid payments of one type or another. Rescue packages for businesses that are still in lockdown. No commercial rates being paid. We’ll have to pay for this well into the future
@Anne Marie Devlin: yes because this is only happening in Ireland.
@Anne Marie Devlin: eh covid has decimated the world economy. Not one country has been perfect reacting to it. There is alot good done as well you mention above: covid payments the increase in retail shopping. And you’re a recession hater! Welldone.
The beginning of the end!!
@Eugene: Calm down Eugene.
I’m just going to ask a few questions about this particular situation: To those of you saying that this is a bad thing and against the idea of people working from home or smaller localised offices, are ye from Dublin? And to those of you saying it would be a good thing for the areas where people are working from home or localised offices, are any of ye from Dublin? I’m in Clare. IMO certain tasks can be done from home/local office, the everyday tasks but while meetings for instance can be done over phone lines, you really should be face to face, in order to gage peoples reactions to what is being said. For that, they could really hire out a meeting room in a local hotel for any weekly or less frequent meetings but after that, I would be in favour of working from home/local offices
People so so bloody dramatic. They were in rent talks. So most likely the rent was over inflated and we all know the rich stay rich by keeping as much of their money as they can. Let lay the blame where it deserves. Greedy landlords.
Maybe they feel they can now negotiate a cheaper lease as I’m sure there will be lots o empty office space for some time to come,
Agile working is the way forward. If more companies promote this kind of thing, rural Ireland will benefit And villages around the country will see some regeneration. Cities surely will see a decline as some business rely on large offices and central workforce’s but the long term is brighter as a whole. Secondly, anyone who thinks jobs will be “outsourced” don’t understand that if companies wanted to send all the jobs to India then it would have happened before now.
Cant wait for the downturn coming
have your say