SHANNON IS bracing itself for another round of job cuts when Aer Lingus becomes the third company in as many days to announce major redundancies.
The company's new chief executive, Christoph Mueller, is due to address a meeting of Shannon Aer Lingus workers this afternoon on proposals to cut 676 jobs across the airline.
Yesterday, Finnish-owned company Tecnotree Ltd announced it was laying off 80 staff, more than half its 141-strong workforce at Shannon.
The deputy managing director of Tecnotree Ltd, Liam Keane, admitted that the proposed job cuts at the company are "quite drastic and quite profound".
He blamed the job losses on "demand for company's products slowing down significantly".
Established in Shannon in 1990, Mr Keane stressed that the company still had a future in Ireland.
"We are not closing down and will continue to be a centre of excellence of prepaid signal systems and maintenance and logistics," he said.
Mr Keane said the jobs to be lost would affect all parts of the company's Shannon operation.
On Monday, the Shannon unit of GE Money announced 50 redundancies arising from its decision to end all remaining GE Capital Solutions insurance premium and equipment finance products in Ireland. Fifteen jobs are to be lost at GE Money's operations in Dublin.
The announced and anticipated job losses add to the 207 jobs being lost at Shannon-based diamond manufacturer, Element Six, as it continues to consider whether to reject or accept the Labour Court recommendations on its survival plan.
Fine Gael mayor of Shannon Tony Mulcahy urged the Government to offer subsidies to companies who are in trouble in the Shannon Free Zone which employs 7,000 people.
"There will be more redundancies if the Government does not step in immediately and provide some sort of subsidy to companies in this region to stop people joining the dole queues. We have to correct this," he said.
Fine Gael TD Joe Carey described the job losses in the Shannon area as "devastating". He said the Mid West Taskforce was projecting an unemployment rate of 20 per cent by next year if measures were not taken to preserve jobs in the region.
"With the loss of jobs in both these workplaces, it is high time the Government implemented the recommendations of the interim report," he said.
"Today's news adds to an already bleak employment outlook, which must be addressed now as a matter of urgency."
Elsewhere, in another bad day for redundancies, 30 jobs are to go at Condron Concrete in Tullamore, Co Offaly, out of a workforce of 59. The job losses have been blamed on the downturn in the construction industry.
It is another blow to Tullamore as the Boston Scientific plant in the town is due to close next month with the loss of 240 jobs.