One More Thing:ELECTRICAL CABLE manufacturer Nexans Ireland cited the weakening of the dollar and, more importantly, the sterling against the euro as the reason why it pulled the plug on its Athlone operation earlier this week with the loss of 100 jobs.

The surprise is that it survived so long. Nexans said the factory had been loss-making for 10 years. Redundancy programmes and restructuring plans had failed to turn things around at a business that was managed by matching sales with copper purchases.

Its main customers were electrical distributors in the UK and Hong Kong. So while its costs were mostly booked in euro, its revenues were largely in either sterling or dollars.

Latest accounts filed for the company show it lost €123,000 in 2006 and just more than €1 million in the previous year.

Its accumulated losses stood at €5.1 million at the end of December 2006, while its defined pension schemes were also in the red to the tune of €402,000.

In 2000 and 2001, Nexans' parent company, Alcatel, forgave €14.2 million that it was owed by the Irish company.

On the plus side, its freehold property interest in Athlone had a net book value of €2 million in 2006 and shareholders' funds stood at €12.4 million at the end of that year. So there should be some money in the kitty for a decent payoff to workers.

Save for a brief pay-related spat in 2003, Nexans was a multinational manufacturing company little known outside of Athlone.

The company's recent trading history probably made its passing inevitable.

However, it could also be an early warning signal for an economy that is heavily exposed to any negative movement in the value of the sterling and the dollar against the euro.

The depressing thing is that there is probably little that our coalition Government can do to stop it.