Dundalk suffered another major jobs blow yesterday with confirmation that US-owned AFL Ireland is to close with the loss of 320 jobs.
The closure will be phased between now and the end of next March. AFL Ireland manufactures components for the automobile market and has contracts with Volkswagen and Audi.
The news was broken to staff at a meeting yesterday afternoon and company managing director, Ms Roisin MacEntee, who has been with AFL since it was established in 1987, told them it was to close.
Speaking afterwards, she blamed "increasing pressure in the market for price reductions, increased operating costs and the slowdown in the demand for our particular sector".
The company supplies the European market and she dismissed the September 11th terrorist attacks on America as being a factor behind the closure.
"The problem is our market sector. We are in the electro-mechanical relay business; it is a very tight market, it has been in a spiral for many years now with huge competition. It is not in anyway related to September 11th. I have been with the company since I left college and this is a huge disappointment to me personally," she added.
It emerged that management at the plant was told at 1 p.m. yesterday of the decision; the remaining staff were informed at a mass meeting called for 3 p.m. There has been no prior negotiation with the union, the AEEU.
Within 15 minutes they started to leave the meeting, many wiping away tears. "I am shocked, devastated but at least I have my mortgage paid," said Mrs Helen Patterson who joined the workforce a year ago.
However, shop steward Mr Brian Gallagher used stronger words. "It's a huge shock, it seems as if someone has flown in by plane, landed here and just stolen our jobs from us. The man himself never spoke, the manager herself nearly broke down ... it's a huge huge shock."
A member of staff since 1991 he says that the economic climate leaves workers seeing, "very little out there for us and as you can see there is not a politician in sight. We knew we were losing money, but we have been losing money for a long time ... it's a huge shock and words fail me."
Mr Gallagher said that union representatives in the plant were told about the closure just 10 minutes before the rest of the staff; redundancy packages have yet to be agreed.
Nearly 70% of the workers are women and many were in tears as they left the meeting to break the news to their families. Many were annoyed that the first indication they had of possible job losses was from listening to the radio.
"There is no future in Dundalk is there? If we wanted to start a family it is bad news," said Ms Sarah Reilly who has been there five years.
Another woman who was made redundant when IKEA (Panasonic) closed its Dundalk plant last year said: "It is dreadful, what do you say? I certainly didn't think this would happen." Mrs Patricia Gorman, who was widowed 10 years ago, said she has four children aged from 11 to 16 years.
"We tried so hard to make it stand alone and turn it around, we did so much work over the last 18 months, it is very disappointing."
Adding to the gloomy outlook for the AFL workers is the recent loss of jobs in other major Dundalk employers.
The Guinness-owned Dundalk Packaging closed during the summer with the loss of around 200 jobs, while more than 300 were lost through cut-backs in Xerox a few weeks ago.
The greatest fear yesterday was that there could be more to come.