Once again the thousand staff employed at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast must sit tight and wait to hear their fate. It is not a new scenario for them. Instead it had become almost a gruesome ritual at the completion of each contract.

So far, the yard has escaped, although the price has been the whittling away of numbers employed at what was once the largest employer in the North. It is impossible to predict whether this crisis will be the end for the shipbuilder, now controlled from Norway, but it is becoming increasingly clear that every close call is simply putting off the day when the end will come.