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A HIGH Court judge has granted court protection to a well-known Dublin printing company which published the Belfast Agreement and has links to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. It has run into difficulties, including the allocation of large State printing contracts to companies based abroad.

Wood-Printcraft Ltd was incorporated in 1961. The long-established printing businesses of Brindley Dollard, which originated in the 19th century and featured in a passage of Ulysses, and the Wood Printing Works, first established in 1837, merged with it in 1978. These businesses had survived the Famine, the Civil War, two World Wars and later economic downturns but had been “felled” by the present “economic depression”, Mr Justice Peter Kelly observed.