The mobile phone company Motorola is to shut its plant in Cork with the loss of more than 300 jobs.
RTÉ News has learned that the plant at Blackrock in Cork city will be closed by the end of May, and that 330 of the 350 staff employed there will leave the company.
Workers at the plant will be told tomorrow.
The news from Motorola follows the announcements that 560 jobs are to be lost at Proctor and Gamble in Nenagh, Thomson Scientific in Limerick and Bourns electronics in Cork.
Motorola came to Cork in 1981 and since then the world's second biggest mobile phone maker has made two significant contributions to the Irish economy.
First, the company provided valuable, high-tech jobs for some of the country's brightest graduates.
Secondly, it acted as a billboard for the IDA - showing other multi-nationals what an Irish workforce could deliver.
The relationship was mutually beneficial, and other industries came and thrived here.
More recently, though, Motorola has been hurt globally by increased competition in the mobile phone market and a consequent drop in phone prices.
Motorola's profits for the fourth quarter last year fell by 50% and the company is cutting 5%, or 3,500, off its global workforce in the first six months of this year.
Motorola has spent the past month consulting its 350 workers in Cork and while those talks have succeeded in saving only a fraction of the jobs here, the process has nevertheless been constructive.
Motorola's aim now is to help its employees find new jobs and it has been facilitating that with other employers visiting the plant and holding mini-recruitment fairs on site.
