Many staff leaving Gateway's plant at Clonshaugh yesterday described it as a good place to work, with some saying it had a "family" atmosphere.

"It's sad to see it go," said Mr Patrick Doran. "I made a lot of friends there. It'll be hard to find a place like it again."

Another staff-member, Mr Neill Fox, said: "I'm a bit saddened. I had a good two years there."

But some ex-workers were less effusive. One employee who started off in reception said employees in that area had been timed for toilet breaks. "In IT you were treated more like a grown-up and less like a school child. There was a family atmosphere there."

According to one ex-employee, customer support technicians were limited to 15 minutes per customer, regardless of the computer problem that customer had.

"Basically, you were promoted on the basis of how quickly you could get through the calls, and not the quality. It was more like a bolt-on to the sale than an effort to get the support up to a standard where it sells PCs. Normally in most of these companies, support is thought of as a cost they have to bear rather than building a business around the support as well," he said.

Relations between employees, managers, supervisors and technical staff were always good, and an informal, relaxed atmosphere was encouraged, this did not prevent a high level of staff turnover.

"Because of the way it was run, there was no way they could keep people . . . It's just 'get through those calls, get the queues cleared'. Once you get to the stage where you are not afraid to answer the phone, you know the problems and you know how to fix them, you just go," he added.

Strict pay guidelines meant the company rarely offered staff more cash to stay on. "There was always going to be staff turnover if they stuck within those guidelines," he said.

Another ex-employee said the firm had served as a kind of nursery for other tech companies. "There are a lot of people out there who are ex-Gateway," he said.