Yesteryears: Devastating news as computer giant pull out of Tipperary with 1,400 jobs lost

Traditionally newspapers, and especially local newspapers, prefer to highlight “good news” stories in their Christmas editions, but unfortunately that couldn’t be the case in our issue of December 20, 1997, when this area was hit with devastating industrial news.

This time 25 years ago Clonmel and the whole south Tipperary area was rocked with devastating news when computer giant Seagate announced that they were to close within six weeks with the loss of 1,400 jobs.

Two years after starting operations in the town in the former Digital plant on the Cashel Road, and less than six months after their official opening, Seagate admitted that they got it wrong and that they should never have sited a plant in Clonmel, wrote Michael Heverin.

Its closure would leave 1,400 out of work - one of the biggest industrial blows nationally for many years - with every town and village in south Tipperary affected. The front page story stated that the Seagate pull-out would be the equivalent to the loss of a sizeable factory in Tipperary Town, Carrick-on-Suir, Cashel and Cahir, and would have an equal impact on nearly every village in the county from Cappawhite to Mullinahone.

The report added that “few departing multinationals can have left Ireland with such damning criticisms ringing in their ears, from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern down, who this week singled Seagate out for a scathing rebuke during a speech to US businessmen in New York”.

Minister of State Noel Davern, a TD for South Tipperary, described the closure as “diabolical”. The company was labelled “un-Christian” at a meeting of Clonmel Corporation, while a meeting of South Tipperary County Council was told that where multinationals are concerned, tigers live in jungles and we must always remember that.