Twitter's new owner Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, paid $44bn for the social media giant last month just as major economies went into a tailspin. Mr Musk said by tweet on Friday that the jobs cuts among its 7,500 staff worldwide were required amid Twitter’s “massive drop in revenue”.

One of the hundreds of people who lost their job in the company was six months pregnant internal communications manager Shona O’Toole, who tweeted that after eight and a half years with the company her “time at Twitter has come to a bittersweet end”.

It has raised concerns about the thousands of other tech jobs that have been created in Ireland by the US multinationals.                 

However, Mary Buckley, the interim boss of the IDA, said the Twitter losses did not mark the end of the Irish tech jobs boom.

The tech sector in Ireland was “robust” and that companies are continuing to hire despite economic headwinds, said Ms Buckley, who was speaking at a new jobs announcement in Cork. She added: 

We may not see the same levels of growth per annum, but we have a strong base of FDI companies here in Ireland. 

There were over 150 foreign direct investments into Ireland in the first half of the year, an increase of 9% increase from a year earlier. Around 18,000 jobs were created by the companies setting up in Ireland, according to IDA Ireland.

“Absolutely there are headwinds ahead, and we’re conscious of that, but if you look at the commitments that have been made it has been a strong FDI performance year to date,” said Ms Buckley. 

Many Twitter employees around the world were told they were fired after they turned on their computers and found passwords had been changed. 

Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath criticised Mr Musk’s methods of firing staff worldwide. 

“It's a very dark day for anyone to suffer the loss of their job, their livelihood,” Mr McGrath said. 

I do think that when difficult decisions have to be made, there is a way of doing it, it's important that people are at all times treated with dignity and respect. 

Amid criticism from politicians, Owen Reidy, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said that dismissing people by e-mail recalled hire-and-fire labour practises of the 19th century. People working in social media tech firms were being treated in similar ways to that P&O Ferries announced layoffs earlier this year, he said. 

Senior economists said they were looking closely for any fallout for Ireland from the retreat of high-profile global tech giants.

Dermot O'Leary, chief economist at Goodbody, said that after a run-up in jobs of the past decade that the news of the past week raised concerns for the many Dublin tech jobs because the city could be seen "as a suburb of San Francisco". 

The Government also relies on the multinationals for a large slice of corporation taxes and the income taxes paid by their well-paid employees. 

Mr O'Leary said that the tumble in stock market valuations of the tech giants as global interest rates climbed has delivered a blow to the shares held by Irish staff working for tech giants. 

Google-owner Alphabet has lost 40% of its value this year to be valued at Friday at $1.1 trillion; Amazon's value has dropped 46% to $933bn; and PayPal has lost 62% of its value this year to fall to a valuation of $86bn.     

Feargal O'Brien, director of business group Ibec, said tech firms had created 30,000 jobs in Ireland in the past two years and some of that "exceptional" growth could be vulnerable to a global economic downturn.     

Legal expert Declan Harmon said that an employer must have genuine reasons to make employees redundant, "for example through a business reorganisation or financial difficulty”.