August 1, 2026
The Irish labour market is loosening after several tight years. There were 141,800 people unemployed in Q1 2026 and the unemployment rate rose to 4.9%, up from 4.3% a year earlier (source: CSO, Labour Force Survey Q1 2026 Key Findings, 2026). Long-term unemployment climbed with it to 41,300 people, or 1.4% of the labour force, up from 0.9% (source: CSO, Labour Force Survey Q1 2026, 2026). Employers running redundancy programmes want outplacement partners who can move affected staff into the next role, not simply run a CV workshop.
Ireland's redundancy framework is set by the Protection of Employment Acts 1977 to 2024 and administered through the Workplace Relations Commission and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (sources: WRC, Collective Redundancies; Department of Enterprise, Redundancy Payments). With unemployment at 4.9% in Q1 2026 and rising, and long-term unemployment back to 1.4%, employers are increasingly buying outplacement to show duty of care and to shorten time-to-next-role (source: CSO, Labour Force Survey Q1 2026, 2026). For outplacement providers, the operating constraint is access to genuine, still-open vacancies at the pace redundancy programmes demand.
Spacewalk gives your firm a private, branded outplacement portal so displaced employees get live vacancies alongside coaching rather than a static job list.
Build your branded Spacewalk job board and invite your talent community in minutes
Whether you choose to stream roles automatically, invite employers or post them yourself they are automatically matched to your talent pool
Track applications, placements and community engagement from one reporting dashboard
Unlike generic job boards, Spacewalk gives you a branded, private or public jobs marketplace your talent actually trust, with sourcing, matching and reporting running automatically in the background.
Personal data on displaced staff is regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, with the Data Protection Commission as Ireland's supervisory authority (source: Data Protection Commission, What we do). Outplacement providers should hold participant data on a clear lawful basis, keep it only as long as needed for the engagement and outcome reporting and let participants exercise their access and erasure rights.
Collective redundancies are governed by the Protection of Employment Acts 1977 to 2024, which set a minimum 30-day information and consultation period with employee representatives before dismissals can take effect (source: Workplace Relations Commission, Collective Redundancies). Selection, coaching and job matching also fall under the Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015, which prohibit discrimination on nine grounds including gender, age, disability, race and membership of the Traveller community (source: WRC, Employment Equality guidance). This is context, not legal advice.
This is an illustrative scenario, not a customer story. An Irish outplacement firm supporting a manufacturer through a collective redundancy stands up a branded portal for the affected staff during the 30-day consultation window. Coaches watch an employer-direct feed match each participant to live, still-open roles by skill, seniority and location, and see applications and interviews by cohort. When the sponsor asks for evidence of duty of care, the team exports landings rather than compiling coaching-hour logs.
With cohort-level data. Spacewalk tracks registrations, applications, interviews and job landings by cohort, so the sponsor sees progression to work rather than coaching hours alone.
From an employer-direct job stream of verified, active roles with direct apply links, matched to each participant's skills, seniority and location. Vacancies are not scraped from job boards or aggregators.
Yes. Each engagement can have its own private, branded portal that carries your firm's identity and the tone of the sponsor's programme.
Yes. Member invites let you onboard an entire affected cohort during the 30-day collective consultation window rather than trickling participants in one by one.
No. Right-to-work verification stays with the hiring employer. Spacewalk connects displaced staff to live vacancies and tracks their progress into their next role.
Participant data is held to enable the outplacement service and produce sponsor reporting, in line with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 under the oversight of the Data Protection Commission. Participants can exercise their access, rectification and erasure rights in the usual way.
Spacewalk supports outplacement firms internationally, including outplacement software for UK providers, career transition platforms in the United States and outplacement platforms for Australian providers.
Explore Spacewalk for Irish employability programmes, Irish university careers services, Irish professional associations and Irish summer school programmes.
