Almost 300 jobs lost in one day

Almost 300 job losses have been announced over the past 24 hours.

The two largest cutbacks involve the shipping line Stena, which is shedding almost 150 jobs in Larne and Rosslare, and Foxteq Engineering. It is closing its Mullingar plant with the loss of 119 jobs.

Stena Line has been making losses on its Irish routes since 1999.

Traffic was down around 16 per cent this year and the decline grew to 35 per cent in the spring due to the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Ninety-two of the jobs are being shed on the Larne-Stranraer route with the withdrawal of the Stena Galloway from service.

On the southern corridor between Rosslare and Fishguard, 54 jobs are being shed.

The Koningen Beatrix is being transferred to the Baltic and is to be replaced by the smaller Stena Europa, which currently operates between Sweden and Poland. Demand is growing on Baltic routes in contrast to the Irish Sea. The company will spend £4 million (€5.08 million) on a refurbishment of the Stena Europe.

According to Stena Line's communications manager Mr Eamonn Hewitt, the Koningen Beatrix has been carrying 350 passengers on about 50 per cent of its voyages between Fishguard and Rosslare. It has capacity for 1,200.

Mr Hewitt said the job cuts were needed to bring the company back into profitability.

Most of the jobs affected are on board ship. The company employs 1,450 people in Ireland, of whom 900 are shore based.

The announcement appears to have caught the unions by surprise and they were not available for comment last night.

In Westmeath, Foxteq Engineering (Ireland) Ltd announced yesterday it was closing its Mullingar plant due to "the worldwide economic downturn".

The company opened in the former Tarkett factory, which closed in 1999. Foxteq was not commenting beyond a brief statement yesterday.

Industry sources said Foxteq, which specialises in plastic injection moulding and casings for the computer industry, could no longer compete with cheap imports from the Far East, even though its own pay rates were not much higher than the national minimum wage. Its main customer was Dell.

Manufacturing operations at Foxteq will cease by the end of the year with 95 people losing their jobs. A further 24 jobs will be shed in January and February.

The Shannon-based telecommunications company Tellabs may seek a further 30 redundancies as part of a global restructuring of its operations.

It closed its Drogheda plant in August with the loss of 204 jobs.

The numbers employed in Shannon will remain at about 450, according to Mr Pat Shanahan, senior vice-president of Tellabs yesterday.

This is due to the re-deployment of a production line over the next two months from the US, where two plants are to close.