You should care about Eircom — our economic wellbeing depends on it

REMARKABLY little has been said or written about the financial crisis at one of Ireland’s most important companies: Eircom. The formerly State-owned company owes about €3.8 billion but does not look as if it can repay all of its debts.

Its survival is not guaranteed, even as it tries desperately to cut its costs by removing even more workers from its payrolls and paying the remaining workers less. It is going to ask its lenders to accept only partial payment of what is due to them. If things do not work then it is possible that parts of the business could be sold to rivals and others shut.

You might wonder why you should be worried by this. After all, the country has enough financial problems to worry about, both with the public finances and the banks before we even consider private debt, with having to care about what’s going on at a privately owned company. But Eircom remains an enormous and important company in the Irish economy and its future as a sustainable entity is important to the national economy.