Tech-sector dependents face nervous future

Nervous times for employees of technology companies in the Republic and indeed the rest of us who rely on the technology-driven Celtic Tiger.

Just a week after 900 Gateway staff learned their fate was effectively sealed, another 650 technology employees - this time at Global Semiconductor in Macroom, in Cork - have been told their jobs have gone as the company closes its Irish operations.

Results from Cisco and, more importantly for the Republic, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have done little to lift the gloom.

Dell is forecasting another fall in sales after failing to meet lowered targets for the past three-month period and Hewlett-Packard only beat dire forecasts with the aid of swinging cost cuts.

With more than 7,000 employees between them in the State, there is cause for concern, to say nothing of the thousands of others working in smaller, more vulnerable technology companies that are rapidly running out of customers as companies retrench.

Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard's battling chairwoman and chief executive, probably called it right when she warned there would be little improvement until sometime next year. The question is: how much damage will the sector in the Republic have suffered by then?