Google Ireland pays out €5bn dividend to parent despite dip in profits and staff cuts

The company behind Google's main Irish operations paid an interim dividend of €5 billion to its parent earlier this year, new accounts filed by the tech giant show.

It follows the payment of a more modestly sized dividend of €42m by Google Ireland during 2022 and a €3 billion payment in 2021.

This year's dividend transfer, which was recorded following the finalisation of the accounts for 2022, came after the company recorded a pre-tax profit of €1.989 billion in the year to end of December, a drop of 30% on 2021.

Turnover at the Alphabet owned company increased by 12% to €72.6 billion from €64.8 billion a year earlier.

Google said this was primarily driven by an increase in advertising revenues, which in turn resulted from a rise in search queries as user adoption and usage grew.

"In 2022 Google Ireland continued to provide value to EMEA advertisers, publishers and partner networks," a Google spokesperson said.

"We saw growth across our key product areas including on Google.com and other Google owned and operated properties."

The company paid tax of €428m, resulting in a profit after tax of €1.561 billion, down from €2.442 billion in 2021.

Cost of sales rose from €14.4 billion to €16 billion in the year, while administrative expenses climbed by €6.9 billion to €54.7 billion.

The average number of employees working at Google Ireland during the year jumped by 15% to stand at 4,832.

However, this was just prior to the company announcing a round of staff cuts earlier this year, which saw 240 workers in Ireland lose their jobs.

Wages and salaries for the year totalled €648m, up from €560m a year earlier.

This means that on average Google workers each earned €134,020 during the period.

Share based payments totalling €196m were also made during the year, while defined contribution pension contributions up to a maximum of 7% of salary worth a total of €25.6m were also made.

Directors received remuneration totalling €1.3m for the 12 months, the same as in the previous year, as well as benefits under long-term incentive schemes which cost €2.5m.