500 jobs vanish as Irish boom suffers bad turn
The Irish Republic's long-running economic boom has been hit by more than 500 job losses within 24 hours.
The redundancies were declared in the engineering, meat-processing and computer sectors.
The latest jobs to go were at American-owned Thermoking engineering plant in Dublin, where 260 workers lost their jobs after the firm decided to base its manufacturing operations at its factory in Galway.
Thermoking produces transport temperature control systems and has 5,000 workers worldwide, with offices in 15 countries.
In west Ireland, the closure of a car components factory in Ballina, Co Mayo, saw 220 redundancies and 50 people were laid off following the closure of Moyvalley Meats, in Co Monaghan.
Ballina's Henninges Elastomers told their workforce about the shutdown this morning, and blamed wage inflation as one of the main reasons. The entire Ballina operation is to be transferred to Germany by its American parent company.
All 170 workers at the plant are to be laid off and a further 50 sub-contracting jobs in the town will also be lost.
The meat procession plant closed because of the loss of markets generated by a lack of confidence in Irish beef because of the on-going BSE crisis.
Yesterday, a software company in Galway announced lay-offs for more than 30 members of its 200-strong workforce.
The Saville-ADC firm said the move had been forced on them by a downturn in the United States information technology industry.
