Seagate will quit Clonmel next week and over 1,400 workers will be left to their own - and the State's - devices. At work they were paid scandalously low wages. Now, one in four won't qualify for severance pay.
This has been called a tragedy and so it is, for the workers and small traders of Clonmel. But the suggestion of blind fate - of events and forces so far beyond our control as to be all but incomprehensible - is misleading.
The company says its decision to leave Clonmel has been influenced by the state of the market in computer parts and by turbulence in the economies of the Far East. No doubt this is so.
But heavy reliance on companies like Seagate has been the policy of governments here since the 1970s. And although it has been largely successful, with 33,000 now working in the high-tech computer sector, we're rarely reminded of risks and flaws until it's too late.
Seagate provides a startling example of the flaws: an easy-come, easy-go arrangement, supported by generous grants and tax allowances, with a workforce that's not only English-speaking and well-educated but unorganised - not a trade union in sight.
Members of the Government keep a respectful distance and promise to interfere as little as possible, though they reserve the right to turn up on opening day to claim the reward of a photocall with the bosses and a bit of blather for the locals.
As for ministerial reactions to Seagate - they failed to see it coming; now they're determined to pretend that it can't happen again. In any event, with that part of the population which the Government bothers about doing so well, the whole thing will soon be forgotten. Won't it?
After all, we're in safe hands. Aren't we?
There's Mary Harney, who advised us to follow the example of the so-called tiger economies of the Far East.
Remember the happy South Koreans that she and Michael McDowell used to talk about? Well, they've just been taken in hand by the International Monetary Fund.
In the third week of November, Far Eastern and US representatives met in Vancouver to discuss what the Washing- ton Post described as a run on the Thai currency which had "blossomed into financial trauma that threatens economies from Japan through Indonesia".
One after another, political and financial leaders of Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan confessed to problems that had suddenly appeared and grown monstrously. Deregulation and decontrol hadn't worked. In fact they'd made matters worse.
As the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mr Mahathir Mohamad, said: "True, there were abuses. There was corruption. There were quite a lot of scams. There was still poverty. But the sufferings now are far greater than before."
Mr McCreevy was unperturbed. When he was asked, half-heartedly, about it - on our national broadcasting service - he went silent for half a second and said, ah no, he didn't think it would have much of an effect on us here. Sound man, Charlie.
The Minister's mind, of course, was on the Budget and as far removed from alarming comparisons or global concerns as it could be.
The Budget was one of the rare occasions when it was possible to trace political cause and effect: how a decision came to be taken, how it was presented and how it turned out.
It started with the general election and the choices offered by the centre-left government of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left on one side, the centre-right alternative of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats on the other.
For many, though, the choice became clear only in the final debate between John Bruton and Bertie Ahern. A choice of reform versus a return to old certainties; reduced, in the case of taxation, to a question of wider bands or lower rates. Fair play for all or a better deal for the better-off.
Mr Bruton won the argument. Mr Ahern won the election. But it wasn't he who delivered the punch line. It was the Irish Independent, driving its message home with a front-page editorial on the day before polling: "For years we have been bled white - now it's payback time."
For more than a week now there has been much debate about the provenance of Charlie McCreevy's Budget. Some say it was the Government's measure, others that it had all the hallmarks of a PD job. The Minister himself says it was all his own work and that he was giving the people what they'd voted for.
Not quite, though it was closer to the hearts and pockets of PD supporters than to the rest. What it did, though, was to meet the demands of Independent Newspapers.
BUT has the Government lived up to the Independent's claims that it understands the needs of the economy? Demonstrated its credibility on taxes and spending? Or proved that it's better fitted than its opponents to steer us through stormy waters?
Not a bit of it. With lower rates for the better-off and a 50 per cent cut in capital gains tax, this Budget sounds more like the work of a Thatcherite administration after 18 years than an Irish government after six months.
When someone reminded Mr McCreevy on Questions and Answers of Sean Healy's criticism - the worst in 12 years - his reply was a snarl.
Mr McCreevy's supporters pompously warn critics against sounding "divisive and inflammatory". Inflammatory and divisive, for pity's sake. Like those in the poverty industry, as he calls it, who drew attention to his "dirty dozen" cuts when he was in charge of welfare?
Mr McCreevy and friends may have detected another subversive influence during the week: Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe telling a BBC audience of an historic opportunity - the first time when we could afford to spend a lot of money helping the poorest among us . . . The bishop didn't say the Minister blew it. He didn't have to.
But the Minister, like Frank Dunlop on RTE's new programme Later on 2, is convinced his measures will prove popular, if not with truculent priests and awkward bishops, then with the electorate. The polls, they say, will tell a tale.
Well, the first of the post-Budget polls was published on Wednesday; and it does. The Irish Times/MRBI poll showed that, for all the rubbish about it's being designed to meet everyone's needs and the populist drop to Croke Park, the Budget is seen for what it was - a boost for the better-off.
The Government and Mr McCreevy chose to forget the trade unions and those on low pay like the Seagate workers, for whom crocodile tears are being shed.
I can only say I hope they don't forget him.
Mr Bruton won the argument, Mr Ahern the election
Mr McCreevy chose to forget the unions. I hope they don't forget him.