More than 200 jobs are to be lost in the Finglas area of north Dublin and another 117 around the Republic and in Northern Ireland with the closure next month of the Kylemore bakery and its chain of 24 shops.

Kylemore Foods plans to close the fresh bakery in Finglas and the 24 shops at the end of August. There are 11 shops in Dublin, two each in Cork, Limerick and Louth and one each in Longford, Navan, Newbridge, Portlaoise, Waterford, Galway and Newry.

Following the closures, Kylemore will concentrate on its parbaked baking business and its 11 Cafe Kylemore outlets around the State. More than 500 people are employed in these other parts of the business which the company says have "significant potential for further business and employment growth".

The 204 predominantly male bakery employees and 113 predominantly female shop employees are being offered three times their statutory redundancy payments. This means that employees aged 16 to 41 will receive 11/2 weeks' pay per year of service, while those aged over 41 will receive three weeks' pay per year of service.

All employees will also receive an additional one week's pay under the terms of the Redundancy Payments Act. Staff without the required two years' service to qualify for statutory redundancy payments will receive an ex gratia payment, a spokesman added.

About a quarter of the staff are represented by the Bakery and Food Workers Amalgamated Union but no union spokesman could be contacted about the closure or the redundancy offer.

But one employee told The Irish Times that the closure did not come as any major surprise as it was clear that orders from major customers like supermarkets had been substantially reduced. "We ended up competing against ourselves," he said, in a reference to Kylemore's move into parbaked baking in competition with Cuisine de France.

A spokesman for Kylemore said the company had tried to find buyers for the bakery and the shops without success and that closure was the final option. Before distribution group DCC bought 50 per cent of Kylemore in 1998, Campbell Bewley had been in discussions on a takeover but nothing ensued.

The spokesman said that Kylemore was the last of the so-called "craft" bakeries which have a high labour content compared to what he described as "industrial" bakeries like Brennans and Irish Pride.

Kylemore, he added, was also a victim of the growth of the parbaked bakeries such as Cuisine de France and Kylemore's own parbaked operation as well as the growth of in-store bakeries in the major supermarket chains. It is understood that the Kylemore bakery and the shops have been losing money for the past four years, although the parbaked bakery and cafe business is profitable.

The Kylemore spokesman said that the 24 shops and part of the eight-acre site in Finglas will be sold with the proceeds used to cover the cost of redundancy payments for the 317 staff.

The most recent accounts are for the year to March 2000. These accounts do not break down the Kylemore business into its various parts - fresh bakery, parbaked bakery, shops and restaurants - but the group had sales of £27.8 million (€35 million) and pre-tax profits of £668,000 (€842,000) in that period.

Kylemore is one of Dublin's longest-established companies, having been founded in 1887. The company was wholly owned by the Hogan family until 1998 when DCC bought a 50 per cent stake for £6 million (€7.6 million).