The firm's corporate headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama, announced this Monday that it was shedding 110 jobs globally as part of a major restructuring, with research and development, marketing and technical support functions that had been carried out in Shannon being moved to Singapore.

The senior vice-president and managing director of the Shannon operation, Kieran MacSweeney, told the Limerick Leader this Wednesday that the primary focus of the company's efforts this week was to get the highly-skilled employees back to work, saying "we are putting a significant amount of work into redeployment".

Asked if this meant placing staff within the Avocent organisation worldwide, he said:

"If any individuals want to put their names forward for positions overseas, I am sure they would be looked on very favourably. We have also employed an outplacement agency to see what suits their particular skills."

Avocent has this week been contacted by three Munster firms in relation to the staff concerned, more than half of whom are involved in research and development.

That team had gone from being part of a global research team to developing and owning their own range of products within a few short years.

"All are highly skilled and extremely experienced and the decision in no way reflects the capability and performance of the staff. It is related more to corporate centralisation decisions," Mr MacSweeney said.

It was important to emphasise the worth of the work carried out by the 103 staff who remain on the payroll with Avocent in the Shannon Free Zone, he added.