The Jurys hotel in Ballsbridge and the Berkeley Court will close next year and a 32-storey building is planned for the plot. Roughly 450 staff at Ballsbridge and 240 at the Berkeley Court will lose their jobs. However the hotel group and Siptu have recently agreed that workers will being offered either 7.5 weeks' pay per year of service, or seven weeks' pay with a cap of 700 a week per year of service.

The union had sought 15 weeks' pay per year of service, while Jurys Doyle offered 5.5 weeks inclusive of all statutory entitlements, or six weeks' pay with a cap of 700 a week per year of service.

Jurys Doyle argued in the Labour Court that the two hotels had been sold because they could not be maintained as viable businesses. It added that the final offers it made to staff at both hotels had "significant" cost implications for the company.

Several staff at the Berkeley Court are understood to have worked at the premises since it was opened in 1978, and they could be in line for substantial redundancy payments.

Siptu and Jurys Doyle have still to hammer out some remaining details about service charge payments. Frontof-house staff such as porters generally receive about 83% of paid service charges while other staff, such as cleaners, receive the remainder. It is understood that Siptu will seek payments to staff based on the best year over the past five.

Jurys Doyle said it had offered those staff who wished to stay with the company jobs in the Burlington Hotel. However, it said no employees had applied for the positions.

Developer Sean Dunne accumulated a 28% stake in Jurys Doyle last year, fuelling speculation that he would make a bid for the company. However, the Doyle family blocked any such move by acquiring a majority holding and taking the company private. The acquisition valued the firm at over 1.1bn.

The company agreed to sell the 4.84acre site at Jurys Ballsbridge to Dunne for 260m. The sale price was more than double the price per acre of any other land sale in the country. Dunne then acquired the adjoining 2.16-acre site, where the Berkeley Court hotel is located, for 119m.

Last week Dunne unveiled plans for the two sites. Redevelopment will include a 32-storey building, 632 housing units and 8,000 square metres of offices, a new hotel, cinema, art gallery, museum and 1,600 car parking spaces. The plan is also believed to include proposals for two other tall buildings, one of 19 storeys and another of 15.

Dunne will also have to provide roughly 120 units of low-cost housing, which he has said he will build on alternative sites in the upmarket Dublin district.