Meta is to let a further 10,000 staff go, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In addition, 5,000 open roles will not be filled.

No specifics for the Irish operation, which employs over 3,000 staff as well as additional contractors, have been announced.

A spokesperson for Meta Ireland said that there was nothing to add to the news at this stage.

Mr Zuckerberg said that the company expects to announce more specifics on the restructuring details and layoffs between late April and the end of May. He added that “timelines for international teams [including Ireland] will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details”.

In some cases, he said, it may take until the end of the year to finalise the restructuring layoffs.

“Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven't yet hired,” he said.

Mr Zuckerberg said that the new round of layoffs were to further its goal of “flattening” the organisation’s structure.

He also blamed the global economy, saying that sluggish continues could continue for “many years”.

“Last year was a humbling wake-up call,” he said. “The world economy changed, competitive pressures grew, and our growth slowed considerably. We scaled back budgets, shrunk our real estate footprint, and made the difficult decision to lay off 13pc of our workforce.

“At this point, I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years. Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation. Given this outlook, we'll need to operate more efficiently than our previous headcount reduction to ensure success. In the face of this new reality, most companies will scale back their long term vision and investments.”

Mr Zuckerberg said that the company, which encompasses Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus, was currently seeking “organisational efficiency, [to] dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimise distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more”.

Last year, Meta announced 350 Irish layoffs as part of a job-cutting drive that saw 11,000 staff (13pc of the company) let go.

Last week, the head of Meta Ireland, Rick Kelley, announced that he would leave the company to “take a break”.

Mr Zuckerberg said that once the new round of layoffs are complete, the company hopes to resume hiring.

“After restructuring, we plan to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group,” he said. “Other relevant efficiency timelines include targeting this summer to complete our analysis from our hybrid work year of learning so we can further refine our distributed work model. We also aim to have a steady stream of developer productivity enhancements and process improvements throughout the year.”