Technology company Spearline has opened new head offices in Skibbereen in the former St Fachtna’s De La Salle secondary school building. 

In February 2019, Enterprise Ireland sanctioned a payment of €540,000 to Spearline Labs Ltd.

The telephone quality monitoring company’s new head office was officially opened by the Irish ambassador to the US, Daniel Mulhall. Spearline bought the old school, situated on 1.25 acres, in 2017.

The Spearline platform enables enterprises and telecommunications service providers to test connectivity and quality on global telecoms networks, testing automatically at volume. The company says it has conducted millions of test calls worldwide, resulting in billions of data-points.

It has offices in Romania and India as well as at another Irish location, in Waterford.

In Association with

Co-founder and chief executive Kevin Buckley is a past pupil of the De La Salle school, along with many others on the staff. Buckley said: “This move allows us to stay true to our roots and create employment. By the end of 2020, we will have doubled our workforce with the creation of 75 additional jobs, half of which will be here in Skibbereen. 

“We have plans to expand across the entire business — development, product, support, sales, marketing, customer engagement, operations, HR and finance. As our global customer base increases so too will our team.”

Ambassador Mulhall added: “I applaud the company for this rapid growth and for its success in servicing clients all over the world from its base in West Cork. It is an example of an innovative and dynamic Irish company with ambitious plans for the future.  As ambassador, I have always made it a priority to support Irish companies in their export effort and wish Spearline well for the next phase of its development.”

The main building of the old school is a landmark in Skibbereen with quite a history. It opened as a school during the Great Famine, during which Skibbereen was particularly hard hit, and the school featured in some of the literature of that time. For some 170 years, the building remained a school until June 2016, when it closed its doors following the building of a new Community School in the town.

Photo: Kevin Buckley (right) and Daniel Mulhall (centre) with Spearline co-founder and CTO Matthew Lawlor. (Pix: Dermot Sullivan)