Compaq’s nuclear links threaten its State subsidies

ALL Government grants will be withdrawn from Compaq’s Irish operations if a Department of Enterprise inquiry confirms the firm’s Galway facility was in breach of export laws, the IDA has said.

Yesterday, the Irish Examiner published evidence from confidential company documents revealing a Compaq division called the High Performance Technical Computing (HPTC) group is exporting software crucial to the French and US nuclear weapons programmes.

The work involved computer design and the production of operating software for some of the world’s largest computers used for the simulated testing of nuclear weapons.