Ex-furniture men now making a living driving taxis

Navan-made furniture for decades was a byword for quality and value. Beautiful suites, kitchens and other items from the town"s furniture manufacturers were showcased at trade fairs in Dublin, the UK and at Navan"s own annual event. For many young people, a job in the furniture trade was a passport to a good livelihood and a secure future. All this changed radically from around the mid-1990s on. Now, it has reached the stage where just a small number of firms continue in business and those still working in furniture-making are rare. Three of the many former furniture workers who got out of the industry as the flooding of the local market by cheap foreign imports wreaked havoc with the business recalled the good and bad days this week. All of them, Frank Carberry (formerly twice Fianna Fail chairman of the old Navan UDC), Paddy Ratty, who was an employer in furniture manufacturing, and Gerry Bradley, formerly a skilled cutter in the local trade, now work as taxi drivers in Navan. Paddy Ratty started his working life in the Navan furniture industry as a 14-year-old, when his job was to put rubber onto the frames and sandpaper them. He was with one of the big names in Navan furniture. 'You had to serve your time,' he said, which took six years. Paddy recalls that so many workers were employed in furniture in Navan in those days that 'for years, you did not know half of the people doing it'. Back garden sheds were viable locations for manufacturing in those days. He believes that, at this stage, even these places have been priced out of the market. His anger at the failure of the powers-that-be to try to save the Navan furniture industry is unabated, although he got out of the business four years ago last June. He believes that one local TD brought the matter up in the Dail but the news that came back was that 'Navan was too dear to compete.' Paddy explains that when the decline got underway, typically, he was delivering a suite to a shop and looking for €1,000. The shop then would charge the customer €400 to €500 more for it. At the same time, imported suites for around €400/€800 were flooding into the country. The quality of these imports, however, was 'rubbish', he added. Navan manufacturers such as Paddy, who had two people working for him, were paying more for covers alone than a businessman he knew down the country was paying for imported suites. As he sees it, these imported suites were being produced 'by slave labour'. He was almost 60 when he gave up the furniture trade. 'It was either get out or be closed, it was gone that bad,' he added. Frank Carberry was in the early 30s when he started work in furniture for the McGoonas in around 1985. 'At that time, the furniture industry was still thriving,' he recalls. He remembers the hundreds of cars driven by all the furniture workers from Beechmount Industrial Estate coming out at lunchtime. The suites of furniture, wall units, tables, chairs and other items from Navan were largely made of mahogany. The fashion for leather suites delivered a killer blow to the Navan manufacturers, however, and now they have become so cheap, they are less attractive with the public. With the housing boom taking off in the mid-1990s, people began to adopt a minimalist approach to furnishing their new homes. The cheaper suites started to be brought in from China and Malaysia and the local manufacturers found their costs meant they could not sell at these prices. The jobs of hundreds of skilled workers, from cabinet-makers and woodturners to polishers to upholsterers, all disappeared. Some furniture people continue in business, including the brother of Paddy Ratty, John Ratty. but for Frank Carberry, it is a 'dying trade'. Gerry Bradley worked as a cutter, which was a specialised job. 'You did not want to make mistakes in cutting cloth priced at €15 or €16 per yard,' he said. Gerry worked for the former Lir Furniture at Beechmount. It was when the cheap imports came onto the market that the damage was done and Gerry realised he eventually would be out of a job. He says he got into the taxi business eight or nine years ago. Frank Carberry, who was a celebrated Navan O"Mahonys goalkeeper, winning medals in 1973, 1979, 1981, 1983 and 1984 as well as a National League medal with Meath from 1975, says he enjoys his job as a taxi driver and has no complaints about customers. Rather, it is the Taxi Regulator he has a problem with. Navan has around 300 taxis now, he says, but you could drive around all night without finding a rank to park, he says. Paddy Ratty says his job has shown him a night-time Navan he was not aware of before and he is concerned at the level of fighting and assaults taking place on the streets. Gerry Bradley also is worried about the large numbers of taxis in Navan, saying they are 'coming from everywhere'.