Dell delivers blow to Ireland with plant closure

“Lads, it’s a jobs massacre,” shouted one worker to reporters as he drove out of the Dell plant, minutes after one of the worst-kept secrets in manufacturing had finally broken.

The stories of devastated families were legion: couples who met on the production line, married and raising families now wondering how they will pay their mortgages, car loans, school uniforms.

But the malaise extends beyond Limerick today. In the capital, the Government is wondering “Who’s next?” as rumours gather pace that IBM, which employs 3,700 people at Mudhuddart, south Dublin, is poised to announce thousands of job cuts globally by the end of the month.

“Think it’s bad now?” texted one listener to RTE, the state broadcaster. “Just wait until Intel and Hewlett Packard move to Bangalore”.

Suddenly the Celtic Tiger doesn’t look just dead – it’s as if it has been taken to a taxidermist and placed inside a glass exhibits case in a museum.

Professor Paul McCutcheon, vice president of the University of Limerick, valiantly defended the Irish model which has transformed the country’s economic fortunes over the last fifteen years, describing the “potential to develop a knowledge society … knowledge-based skills will keep a competitive edge”.

But the only knowledge which seems relevant today is that in Poland, where Dell is moving its production, workers earn €3 an hour compared with a spread €10 and €14 an hour in Ireland.

The Polish government has invested €52.7 million into providing new facilities for Dell at its new plant in Lodz. Its key workers were trained in – you guessed it – Limerick several years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of Poles have poured into Ireland and the UK in recent years. Now that the boom years are over they are going home, leaving behind them a secure reputation as diligent and intelligent workers prepared to turn their hands to any job.

When the Irish economy was roaring and native workers practically disappeared from service jobs such as petrol attendants and shop and restaurant staff, nobody bothered to peer into the future.

But now that US multi-nationals – the backbone of the Irish economy – are shifting their operatons eastwards, there is a keen awareness of the vulnerability of the country’s principal asset, the highly-educated Irish worker.

The best-case scenario is that Dell will follow Apple’s operation in Cork, which began in the 1980s in Ireland as a manufacturing operation, and at its peak employed 3,000 people.

Today, Apple employs over 1,100 people at its Cork operation - no longer in manufacturing but in higher-value finance, e-commerce, R&D, supply chain and legal activities.

The worse-case scenario, however, could be that of Gateway 2000, which came to Dublin in the mid-1990s, and at its peak employed close to 3,000 people in direct PC manufacturing and call-centre work before closing abruptly in 2001 – moving to the Far East.

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