Dockyard’s fate was sealed a year before its closure

The fate of the Verolme Cork Dockyard was sealed more than a year before its closure in 1984 when the government accepted a report by a consultant that it was not commercially viable.

State papers show the government was informed in 1983 that the Dutch- owned shipyard based in Rushbrooke, Co Cork, which employed almost 1,100 staff at the time, had no prospect of securing either foreign or domestic orders due to its low productivity rates and high prices.

The company — which was profitable up to 1978 — suffered as a result of “the worst slump in living memory” which hit the global shipbuilding industry from the mid-1970s.