As news came this week of the imminent closure of its Hospira factory, many in Donegal town wonder if they'll ever work again, reports Susan McKay.
Letterkenny, Moville, Carndonagh, Buncrana, Raphoe, Lifford, Stranorlar, Dungloe, Glenveagh, Falcarragh, Ballyshannon, Portsalon, Crolly, Malin, Killybegs. Jobs are being lost from towns and villages all over Donegal, and this week's news that the Hospira medical equipment factory is to close in Donegal town, with a loss of 560 jobs, has left people in our most northerly county feeling shocked, depressed, and angry.
Each Sunday night now, a fleet of coaches leaves from near the harbour in Killybegs, where a stone commemorates the fact that the pier was built by the Congested Districts Board in 1867. The same scene is repeated all over the county. Young women and men make the long journey to Dublin, to bedsits and jobs in the civil service and the construction industry. They come home late on Friday. "Dublin is the new Kilburn," says local Sinn Féin councillor Thomas Pringle.
It rained all this week, but just occasionally the sun broke through, lighting up swathes of the mountains like "heavens' embroidered cloths" in the Yeats poem. Part of Donegal's beauty lies in the vastness of its empty spaces. People have always had to leave, and the harsh sadness of that is commemorated in songs and stories.
At Glenveagh Castle there's a map that lights up to show all the cottages from which tenants were evicted during the Famine years.
Almost everyone in Ireland has relations in Scotland, England and the US. But the bad times were meant to be over, and have been over for many other parts of the country since the birth of the Celtic Tiger.
Not for Donegal, though. This week also brought the news that it had the highest consistent level of poverty in the country. The Combat Poverty Agency found that the risk of poverty in the county was twice the national average. Donegal has 17 per cent unemployment, four times the national average. The county has lost more nearly 7,000 jobs since 1998. "This county has taken more than its share of blows," says Pringle.
Many of the jobs that have gone were women's jobs. "There are 500 women in Hospira and about 60 men," says Katherine McIntyre, president of the Donegal branch of Siptu, and a worker and shop steward at the factory. Most of the workers are in Siptu. "Most of the men are in management. So what's new?"
"Every woman has a different story," says Angel Doherty, a production operator at the factory, and a shop steward. She and her family moved from Belfast 30 years ago for a better life. She has worked for 20 years in the factory. There are single parents, single women who have just started to buy their homes, and women whose husbands have been laid off from the fishing industry or other factories, or who are making a pittance on small farms. There are young couples building houses, and older ones with children.
McIntyre has worked in the factory since a year after it opened, as a branch of Abbott Ireland, in 1980.
"I'm a widow with three teenagers, two of them in college. I haven't a hope of getting another job in Donegal. I'd say between the factory and suppliers there'll be a thousand jobs lost over this," she says. "I couldn't live on social welfare, so I'll have to move or retrain or both. I've told my daughters I'll do what I can, but there will have to be cutbacks."
THE WOMEN ARE angry about claims that it was a recent pay rise that led to the closure. "At the beginning of September, we'll get a rise to bring the hourly rate to €10.06," says McIntyre. "It is the cost of living that is the problem, not the cost of labour. It is hard to live on our wages. Our jobs are going to Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. It isn't the difference between €8 and €10 we're talking about - it's the difference between €1 and €10."
Globalisation has already taken more than 200 jobs from Donegal town. The Magee tweed factory recently moved its clothes-making work to Morocco.
Siptu points out that Hospira was already paying its Donegal workers less than in other parts of the country and that it was making a profit. Management gathered workers together last Monday night to tell them how much they valued their contribution to the company. The following morning, at 9.40am, women on the early shift were called to a meeting.
"The director, Dermot Murphy, stood up. He was flanked by two of the directors from America who remained poker-faced throughout," says McIntyre. "He said: 'I'm only here a few months. I know very few of you, but I've bad news for you. I am now announcing the closure of the plant within 18 months.' People were so gobsmacked they couldn't speak. A few people asked silly things like, 'Where will we get a job?'"
Marian McGinley, also a production operator and shop steward, was due in for the later shift, and heard the news from a neighbour, who had heard it on the radio.
"I nearly got sick," she says. "It is completely devastating. A lot of women over 40 who've been there for years are worried they'll never get another job. It would be nice to think the Government would step in and do something, but nobody really expects that to happen."
People are cynical because of previous experience. There are fears that the redundancies will start very soon, and worries about what the terms will be.
Donegal has six TDs, four of them Fianna Fáil, with one Fine Gael and one independent. Mary Coughlan is Minister for Agriculture and Food, and Pat "The Cope" Gallagher is Minister of State with responsibility for Marine.
Sean Reilly, branch secretary of Siptu, points out that most of the major recommendations made by the task force, set up in 1998 in response to the closure of Fruit of the Loom, have not been implemented.
The Donegal Town Community Chamber of Commerce held an emergency meeting on Thursday night, after which it demanded that local TDs address the "drastic unemployment" situation.
"We don't want another task force," says chairman Ernan McGettigan. "We want an action group. We need huge improvements in our infrastructure and we need local indigenous businesses to be supported. We need people to stop objecting to proposals such as those which would have brought big stores like Dunnes and Tesco to this town. We've been too dependent on manufacturing. The impact of this on this area is going to be drastic. We seem to be the forgotten county. But we will fight for our survival." McGettigan's own business is at risk - he runs a butcher's shop and supplies the Hospira canteen.
FURTHER ALONG THE coast, in once prosperous Killybegs, Mary, who doesn't want to give her real name in case it puts prospective employers off, was laid off by a local fish processing factory two years ago, and was overjoyed when she got a job at Hospira.
"There was no announcement about the end of my last job - they just stopped ringing to tell us to come in," she says. Fish processing is seasonal and many workers are employed on a casual basis. "With this new job, I thought I was set for life, and I'd never have to look back. It is depressing, really. Oh well. Think positive," she says bleakly.
Gerry McBrearty worked for a company that auctioned fish at Killybegs harbour. He lost his job 18 months ago and is clearly miserable on the dole.
"I used to work 14, 16 hours at a go and I was quite happy," he says. "I left school in 1987 when I was 17 without doing the Leaving - there seemed no point. There was plenty of work, and plenty of money to be made. Now the bottom has fallen out of the industry here. The boats are landing in Spain and Scotland and Norway." Most of his friends are also unemployed now, and many, like him, are unskilled early school-leavers. He says they hardly see each other now. No one can afford to socialise.
"One of them recently headed off to London. At 56, he's a bit long in the tooth. People have skills that are no good outside this town - like net-making and hand-filleting. We might as well be in Iceland for all the Government cares."
KILLYBEGS'S TROUBLE DATES back to Ireland's entry to the EU, when the fishing industry was bartered to get a better deal for farmers. After allegations in recent years that there was widespread abuse of the quota system, the Department of the Marine took to rigorously examining catches. The new state-of-the art pier is only open during the eight hours when fishery inspectors are available to police it. Tadhg Gallagher, manager of a local fish processing company and chairman of the parish council, is furious about the decline of the fishing industry, which, he says, is entirely avoidable.
"It has mostly to do with the heavy-handed implementation of Brussels - jobs aren't being lost here, they are being given away - over 600 of them in the last year alone," he says. "The ridiculous control regime applied here isn't applied in other EU countries and that is where the boats are going. Manufacturers like Hospira are subject to the world market. Here in Killybegs it is different. We have the ships, the factories, the market and the skilled workforce. We are being frustrated and regulated out of existence by our own Government."
Many of Donegal's hotels have signs in their windows looking for staff. McBrearty took a job as a night porter. He lasted four months.
"I had to work a 12-hour shift, seven nights a week. I'm used to working outside with other people and plenty to do - I was getting suicidal. I left."
Local hoteliers admit that anti-social hours and low pay put many people off. Most of the lowest paid staff are now Polish. "They are happy. They've left a country where the minimum wage is €3," says Jim White, managing director of the Central and Abbey hotels in the diamond in Donegal town.
But tourism is also in decline in Donegal. White had empty rooms during the peak summer season this year, despite competitive rates. Irish people are going abroad for cheaper holidays, and Americans aren't travelling because of their fear of terrorism.
This week, as tourists complained about the rain sweeping in over the Atlantic, locals considered a bleakness of an entirely different magnitude.
Fruit of the Loom - 2,850
Other textile and clothing companies - 1,766. These include Unifi (700), Magee (200) Comerama (200), Donegal Shirt Company (70), Jaybees (120), Fingal, Gaeltex (60), Nena Models (140) Herdmans (66), Montay (50), Sioen Teo (protective clothing - 70), Dromont (40), Sub4 (10), Hamel Clothing (12), Errigal Knitwear (8), Falcarragh Knitwear (6) and Kilcara Yarns (14). Some of these companies had larger workforces but gradually shed jobs over previous years.
Other manufacturing jobs - 1,661. These include Donegal Foods (40), Glenveagh Mushrooms (6), Arramara Teo (seaweed fertilisers - 6), Silet Teo (car parts - 12), Dianorm Teo (radiators - 115), Ruibear Mótair Teo (rubber car parts - 300), Europlast (plastic bags - 50), SMTC/Qualtron (telephone cables - 280), MDR (computer parts - 60), BMR (parts for slimming machines - 120), PLM (metal sheets - 12), Donegal Parian China (55), Nuvolen Crolly (electrical transformers - 45) Hospira (medical equipment - 560).
Fishing industry jobs - 600 (approx)
Includes fishfarming, netmaking and other related industries.
Total: 6,877
It is estimated that 400 or more jobs could be lost as a knock-on effect from the closure of Hospira. The 1998 Task Force Report called for the creation of 9,000 jobs in Donegal by the end of 2005. Some 1,000 have been created.