Eir’s plan to bring all its retail operations back in-house has been notified to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission for approval.

Eir plans to acquire more than 40 Eir-branded stores operated by Synchro Group. The existing agreement between the two companies expires on December 31, and as negotiations between the parties have not yet concluded, Eir declined to comment on whether the deal would involve Synchro's operations being bought by Eir.

But the telecoms company said no redundancies are planned and Synchro employees would transfer across to Eir, keeping their existing terms and conditions of employment.

Eir also said that Synchro retail operations would be “insourced” next year, while as from January 1 Eir will  operate all aspects of Synchro's retail estate.

Synchro has been running the stores for Eir since 2010, as well as handling business-to-business sales, and  when a deal is agreed 173 Synchro staff will transfer to Eir.

In Association with

The company was set up specifically to provide managed services for Eir by Brendan O’Hagan, who sold his mobile phone stores chain to Esat for €5m in 1999 and who co-founded low-cost gym chain Flyefit in 2011.

By this year, it was operating 41 Eir-branded stores offering a range of voice, data, broadband and TV services to residential and business customers.