BY THE end of next month, Tipperary will have come to realise just how important the Tambrands factory was to the town.
While the air of shock at the closure announcement is palpable, the reality of how the local economy is going to suffer has not yet become obvious to most townspeople. But it will. As Christmas approaches, Tipperary and its hinterland will be left with a deficit of as much as £60,000 a week when the pay cheques dry up - and that figure could be as high as £70,000 when bonuses for the 220 employees are taken into account.
Tambrands was a good employer and it was good for Tipperary town as well as the outlying villages such as Oola, Pallasgreen, Golden and Cappawhite.
New life was breathed into these villages by Tambrands employees who could afford to take out mortgages and build new homes. Now they're wondering what the future holds and considering the apparently bleak options open to them in an area of high unemployment and poor prospects.
Yesterday, stocktaking exercises were going on in Tipperary's financial institutions such as banks, the credit union and building societies. The purpose was to determine how many Tambrands employees were on their books, how much they owed, and what were their circumstances.
As a result of the closure, the Tipperary local authority will lose £48,000 a year in rates, and while every shop, bar and retail outlet will be affected, the domestic sphere is where most of the pain will be felt.
"Just this morning I had a couple in here wondering what they are going to do about their mortgage. They wanted to know what we can do for them," Mr Dermot Donoghue, manager of the EBS, said. He added: "The EBS will be as sympathetic as it can and we will do our best for them. They are in a predicament and we will do anything we can to lessen the trauma.
"We have given mortgages to a lot of Tambrands workers and now we re in the process of determining exactly what the position is. Some of the workers took out mortgage protection policies covering redundancy. They are the lucky ones because their mortgages will be paid under the policy for a period of 12 months. Many others, however, did not take out these policies.
"In this situation, we would have to look at each case individually and see what we can come up with. This closure is going to affect not just Tipperary town alone but the entire area surrounding it. It will have an impact on the social life of the town which will be just as severe as the impact on its economy and domestic life."
In the Irish Permanent Building Society, the manager, Mr David Dineen, said officials were running computer listings to establish the extent of the society's lendings to Tambrands workers. "We are led to believe that there will be fairly good redundancy payments and this may help some of the workers to get over their mortgage problems. But it is too early to say. It's a question of wait and see.
"As far back as last February, a number of workers anticipated that the plant would be in trouble and came to talk to me about their mortgages. We could have genuine hardship cases to deal with because of this closure. Head office has been advised of the position.
"The young people who are not long employed at the plant and whose redundancy will not be very good will face the greatest difficulty. They are the real heartbreak cases. It's very sad for them and for the town.
"I would have said that Tambrands was the Guinness of Tipperary. When a Tambrands worker came looking for a mortgage you felt you were on a safe bet. I am manager here for 10 years and have never had to face a dilemma of this magnitude. The closure of Mass Mutual last March with the loss of 50 jobs was bad, but this is catastrophic."
In the credit union, which also has many Tambrands workers on its books, a similar exercise was under way. "The town is devastated," said the manager, Mr Seamus O'Reilly.
"We are a community based financial institution and anything that affects the community affects us. We will be discussing it at board level in the near future to see where we go from here. We will be assessing the significance of the closure and people will be given a fair hearing."
Mr Bill Kingston, a retailer in the town, said the effect of the closure could not be underestimated and the community would have to stand together.