The C&D Foods fire will swell Co Longford's unemployment rate by 25 per cent. Laid-off workers talk to Kathy Sheridan about the future
Workers and business people throughout Co Longford knew they were staring into ruin when they heard the news of the fire at C&D Foods. The destruction of the factory in Edgeworthstown last Sunday night would swell the county's unemployment figures by 25 per cent. Men and women who had invested sweat and tears into small businesses on the back of C&D Foods saw dreams go up in flames.
For some, it revived stomach-churning memories of other spectacular fires, closures and disappointments in the past few years. There were fires at the Glanbia bacon factory in Rooskey and at Glennons' sawmills and there was the closure of Atlantic Mills. There were also the 1,200 jobs promised at Cardinal Health which never materialised, only somewhat offset by the arrival of Abbott healthcare with its 300 graduate jobs.
For Co Longford, whose population of about 32,000 could fit twice over into Tallaght, the boom years were late arriving. Some blame the politicians in general; others blame Albert Reynolds for not doing enough for his own county as taoiseach, apart from bringing the first decentralised government offices to Longford town in his first term.
Progressive Democrat TD Mae Sexton notes that the arrival of the Department of Social and Family Affairs was a "tremendous boost - though nothing much came on the back of it". Baffled discussions about Co Longford's inability to attract investment usually hark back to the protracted strike at Noel Hanlon's ambulance factory, she says.
"When that closed it seemed to have a huge impact on the saleability of Longford," she adds. "It was said that the unions weren't trusted and so no one would invest in the county. But whatever it was, that closure really had a serious impact. The textiles industry had started to wane. There was no investment, no industry. They were bleak times."
It was Sexton, with Mary Harney as her guide and guarantor, who put her faith in the much-heralded plans of Cardinal Health to create 1,200 jobs.
"It was the first spark; it was sold as the single biggest investment in the midlands. I truly believed it would happen," she says. "Now I'm beginning to think that small is beautiful, that you're better off with 300 jobs and another 300 there."
Karen Clabby, recently elected president of Longford Chamber of Commerce and a solicitor in Longford town, believed that things were looking up, what with the M4 bringing the county to within an hour of Dublin's outskirts and the arrival of Abbott, plus UK multiples Argos and Homebase, designed to keep midlands consumers shopping at home.
"From many points of view, it was all positive, so this fire is a shocking blow," she says.
As the week ended, the news from C&D was marginally better - for some. The company announced yesterday that 173 workers could return to work in about a week when the "soft can" (the pet food sold in trays and pouches) facility resumes production.
The long-term prospects of the 300 remaining laid-off workers will be known in four weeks, but already some of them are talking about unemployment for life.
FOR GERRY PARKER and his 23-year-old son, Jamie, the week ended as bleakly as it began. They did not work in the "soft can" division. Polite and soft-spoken, they describe how Gerry's job was to feed the raw materials into the silo for cooking and Jamie's was to take away the cans with his forklift. They know no other jobs.
"I have no skills," says Jamie. "I have a pass at Leaving Cert and can drive a forklift. I have a mate who went into the Fás office in Longford on Monday and was told there are no forklift jobs going. I rang a painter I was painting with for a year but he said he's quiet at the moment . . . There might be something in a couple of months."
Beside him, Gerry, who is 47, is well aware that if the outlook is bleak for Jamie, it must be worse for him.
Up to last Monday morning, their lives were moving forward. Jamie and his girlfriend, Sinead, who have a three-year-old son, both had solid jobs with C&D.
Before Christmas, they applied for their first mortgage. They had picked out the house, a local authority, three-bed bungalow "in great condition". He was taking home €350 for a "flat week" and overtime was available.
"I have a lot of mates who would take home over €500 a week. There'd be no bother getting 20 to 30 hours overtime and it's not hard work really," Jamie says with disarming honesty.
He could well afford his €130 a week car loan and €50 a week rent. Incorporating the car loan into the €200,000 mortgage, combined with the saving on rent, would have been the bonus. At €160 a week, the mortgage repayments would have been easy.
Several people had worked on getting the mortgage for him. Edgeworthstown is still a country town, a place where community ties matter and informal networks slip into gear when needs must.
We're sitting in the Park House Hotel, owned by Frank Kilbride, Mayor of Longford, Fine Gael councillor, undertaker, postmaster, property developer, manager of country singer Declan Nerney, and the man who brought Charley Pride and Slim Whitman to town. Kilbride notes that Edgeworthstown lost a Bank of Ireland branch before Christmas, and that "the mart is gone, the monthly court is gone, four of the town's 11 pubs have closed". The post office (due to see a sharp surge in business next week with benefit claimants) was threatened with closure in recent years. But it didn't stop a building boom around the town, fed by the wave of optimism and the apparent solidity of C&D jobs. Planning permission has been given for 500 houses in the past four years, with more than 300 of them now built and sold.
It was a friend of Kilbride's, says Jamie, who rang him on Wednesday to say that his mortgage had been approved - but warning that he shouldn't sign anything. The prospect of a mortgage now looks bleak.
The reality of unemployment benefit is hitting home. "We now have the equivalent of one week's wages coming in as opposed to two," he says.
His father nods sympathetically. He has his own worries. Gerry sold his house last year and traded up to what Jamie proudly describes as a four-bed bungalow in the town with a good-size garden".
Gerry got a €200,000 mortgage before Christmas, costing about €160 a week, in addition to his €11,000 car loan from the credit union, at about €140 a week. His wife doesn't work outside the home and he has just discovered that the mortgage protection policy offers no protection in his situation.
"You're covered for sickness, death, redundancy, but not unemployment. Who'd have thought? A fire in concrete? It'd be like burning a river, the floors were constantly wet," he says, still incredulous, ticking off all the reasons why no one could have predicted such a circumstance. He is still in shock. "It's really like losing your father and mother."
Gerry's 18-year-old daughter, Joanne, started work at C&D before Christmas. "She hoped to get a year's work out of it and go to college. She'd done a year studying hairdressing and beauty in Cavan College and was coming back to try to get a few pounds together to do another year."
Yesterday's news of the factory's partial return to production was vindication time for Reynolds loyalists in a week when few business people in Co Longford were prepared to bet that the family would dig in and rebuild. But the loyalists always insisted that Philip Reynolds would not walk away from the company founded by his father 37 years ago.
"I saw Albert Reynolds coming in at five in the morning bursting his gut when there were only about 10 to 15 people there," recalls Frank Whitney, who joined the company within a few months of its opening in 1970. "I saw it when the staff was at 20 to 25. I saw it when they opened the new factory in 1982, high-tech for the time, and it grew to about 60 workers. And I saw Philip take it over in the late 1980s and bursting his gut to make it grow to employ 500."
Other people might say - and do say - that Philip, who got a modest Leaving Cert, was cushioned by family money and always had "a good car under him" no matter what was going on. But according to Whitney, Philip - who went to school in Roscrea and was a contemporary of Brian Cowen (now Minister for Finance) was the kind of driven man who would do his day's work in the factory and drive to Dublin in the evening to study for his degree.
"If there's a man in Ireland who can put that business back on the road, it's Philip Reynolds. I'd put my house on it," says Whitney.
A production foreman for the past 29 years, Whitney left school in Edgeworthstown at a time when the generation just before him had all been forced to emigrate, "but through C&D, I was able to rear six kids, put them all through third-level education - and there were fees in the early days - and still have a good living out of it". This week, he passed the time sweeping the yard for his son, who runs a pub in the town.
SEAN LOGAN (73), now retired as a driver from Quinn's Supply Store in the town, delivered the first bag of cement to C&D when it was being built.
He had three daughters working there and a son-in-law. His niece had three sons employed there: John, Gerry and Seamus Gilchrist.
"It's going to make an awful difference to their lives. Money is going to be scarce . . . The Reynoldses were very good to the staff. Philip is a gentleman. They treated everyone like their own. This is like a death in everyone's family . . . It happened in all of a slap, all of a sudden."
Apart from his own family links in C&D, Seamus Gilchrist's mother-in-law and sister-in-law also worked there. Seamus, his brother John and their colleague, Brendan Greene, were still pondering the shock of discovering that the much-vaunted mortgage protection policy doesn't cover their circumstances.
Greene, who progressed to work in the goods inwards/purchasing area, had worked at the factory for 21 years.
"I know nothing else but C&D," he says.
"I have no dependants but you have a responsibility to your mortgage and car loan. Without a car, you've no way to travel. I talked to the bank this morning and they said they would facilitate a postponement of the direct debits for a three-month period. Savings will cover a month or two, but after that . . .
"I never claimed sick benefit through work or dole. I pay VHI and PRSI and if I had to go to the doctor or the chemist, I still had to pay another €40 to €70. In a situation like this, with 500 people - of which 300 have been contributing enormously to Government coffers for 37 years - it should really be up to the Government to step in and help people who have mortgages."
They had good times. When Seamus got married last year, the reception (for 300 guests) and Australian honeymoon added up to €28,000, "and worth every cent", he laughs.
John had planned to get married in 2008, but "she can add a one to that", he says. "I left school and walked into C&D. I don't know anything else."
Meanwhile, they spare a thought for the less obvious losers in the fire. They estimate 1,000 people were relying on supplying stuff into C&D.
They mention the shop down the street, which has lost the breakfast roll trade, the sandwich-makers for the factory vending machines, the man with two lorries relying on C&D for more than two-thirds of his business.
Karen Clabby reckons it all adds up to a €12 million loss in disposable income to the county. "I hope," she says, "that market forces and time won't deter the Reynolds family in the long-term from reviving a thriving business."