Over the past three or four years, the Republic has become blase about job announcements. So it is something of a shock whenever a major technology company says it might lay off Irish workers. Confidence suddenly shaken, people start to pose awkward questions. Has the bubble burst? Have they finally copped on to us? Is our affair with the computer over? The latest round of soul-searching came this week, when the spectre was raised once more of Apple Computers closing down its printed circuit board plant in Cork. Such a move could cost around 600 temporary jobs, and up to 150 full-time positions. Things also look grim at Motorola's Dublin plant, where the company's global restructuring could spell a P45 for around 500 casual radio assembly workers.
In fact, there is a pattern to closures such as these, and while the job losses prove traumatic for the individuals involved, the labour market, and the economy as a whole, may not suffer. Indeed, with sufficient industrial, educational and economic planning, this pattern could make the Republic richer.
In the case of Apple, the company's founder, Mr Steve Jobs, has returned as chief executive. He has already brought the firm back into the black after years of heavy losses. Mr Jobs and his management team in Cupertino, California, are now in the closing stages of developing a new business strategy; the thrust of it so far is that Apple should concentrate its efforts on its core business, and farm out everything it can.
Unfortunately for Cork, manufacturing printed circuit boards (PCBs) is not considered an essential high-tech operation anymore. Motorola's business has been hit hard by the crisis in the Asian economies, and it has announced not only a global restructure, but also that it must lay off 10 per cent of its 150,000 staff around the world.
Although executives have said recently that Motorola's radio communications equipment factory in Swords, Dublin, continues to be one of its more profitable facilities, analysts say 500 casual jobs there are in danger.
With more and more international companies regarding the world as one large economy, many analysts say there is little point in Ireland trying to fight the tide. Better, they say, to ensure that our population is so well-educated that it can compete for the high-end jobs by offering a base of high-skilled workers that low-wage economies cannot match.
When the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, travels at the end of this month to meet Apple executives in the United States, her primary task will not be to save the PCB factory. Although she will argue that the company should retain it, her focus will be on persuading Apple to keep the rest of its Cork operation - and its 1,000 skilled employees - at the centre of the company's global strategy.
If she succeeds, and the fact that Apple chose to manufacture its new notebook computers in Cork is already a positive sign, then the Irish operation will in fact emerge from this troubled period far stronger than it entered.
IDA Ireland executives, some of whom will accompany the Tanaiste on the trip, are acutely aware of how transient low-skill jobs have become. The agency has been at pains to point out this week that the vast bulk of the jobs under threat at both Apple and Motorola are temporary positions, and the companies did not receive any IDA grants for them.
The IDA has long adopted a strategic approach to the issue. Releasing the 1997 annual report on Wednesday, the agency's chairman, Mr Denis Hanrahan, said the Republic's "key advantage in the ever-increasing competitive markets for mobile investment" was its young, confident, articulate and independently-minded people.
At a press conference, Mr Hanrahan departed from his script to stress that this did not mean writing off as "unemployable" thousands of unskilled people. He pointed to an education project by the US software giant Microsoft in Dublin's Ballymun, for many years an unemployment black spot.
"Some of the highest-qualified software engineers today are former `long-term unemployed' men and women," he added.
