COMPUTER company boss Michael Dell yesterday gave a morale-boosting talk to workers at a Limerick plant which shed 1,900 workers in 2009.

The first group of employees being made redundant at the Dell plant in Limerick are due to collect their final pay cheques today.

A REPORT predicting almost 9,500 jobs could be lost in the mid-west region as a result of the closure of Dell’s manufacturing facility in Limerick was based on a “worse-case scenario”, according to the Government.

EVEN though the writing was on the wall since the day workers at the Raheen plant in Limerick started training their Polish successors to run the new €200 million Dell plant in Lodz, yesterday’s announcement that 1,900 jobs, and anything up to another 10,000 downstream jobs are to go, is a huge body blow to our economy and our country’s badly shaken confidence.