By Business & Finance 
JD Buckley is in the process of overseeing one of the largest recruitment drives in Ireland in recent years taking the number of Sky Ireland employees from 60 to 900 people.
Because
Over the past eight months, Sky Ireland has grown from approximately 60 persons to 450 and will reach 900 employees by the end of July this year. In January An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD officially opened the company’s new operations centre on the Burlington Road. The move represents part of Sky’s commitment to invest over €1 billion in its Irish business over the next five years, including the significant recruitment drive which is currently underway.
Sky – Ireland’s most popular digital TV provider – created the 800 new jobs in order to meet increased service demands from Irish customers and to enable it to serve them from one dedicated site for the first time. A wide variety of opportunities are on offer, ranging from customer service manager and advisor roles to training, coaching and HR positions.
Leading business growth
JD Buckley is managing director at Sky Ireland and is based at Sky’s Dublin office. He joined Sky last May from his own business consultancy which he ran for the previous four years. During this time he took on the interim role as chief operating officer at Prontaprint and Kall Kwik. Buckley also spent a significant part of his career working for Irish owned Digicel – the fastest growing mobile telecommunications operator in the Caribbean and Central America. He was chief executive officer of its Cayman Island business before taking responsibility for the North Caribbean region.
JD Buckley is supported by Sky Ireland’s sales and marketing director, Mark Anderson and Mark Deering, director of director of corporate affairs Ireland, and other members of the Sky team in Dublin, including those in Sky Business and Sky Media, to take forward the overall Irish strategy.
Commitment to Ireland
Speaking at the opening of Sky Ireland’s new contact centre, Jeremy Darroch, Sky chief executive, said: ”The launch of our new site in Dublin marks a very significant day for Sky’s Irish business. Ireland has been a great market for Sky. We’ve been here from the very start, growing to become the most popular provider of TV in the country. For the first time, we will have a dedicated presence on the ground to support this growth.”
Sky is committed to providing top-quality customer service and the opening of this centre is an example of its continuous investment in Ireland. The new Dublin site is Sky’s tenth customer service centre, joining other Sky sites across the UK. It forms part of an ongoing programme to bring more of Sky’s customer service and installation workforce in-house and ensure its own people deal with customer issues.
Sky will soon introduce broadband and home phone services for Irish customers, representing another significant milestone in its product offering. The company currently reaches over 10.6 million homes across the UK and Ireland with its services, and has led viewers into the age of high definition television with Sky+HD. Sky also continues to break new ground with its own portfolio of channels and is committed to growing its investment in home-grown content to €700m per annum by 2014.
The company already employs over 23,000 people across the UK and Ireland.
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