Government must disclose supports offered to Tara Mines owners
- Catastrophic blow to Meath & Louth as mine owner set to lay off 650 workers
Louth & East Meath Labour TD, and the Party’s enterprise spokesperson Ged Nash has called on the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to disclose the supports the government was prepared to make available to Boliden in order to avoid 650 lay-offs at the Navan mine.
His call comes in the wake of the company’s announcement that it plans to proceed with the lay-offs first announced two weeks ago.
He said:
“No decision is ‘unavoidable’. Unions and workers who care about the company have worked extremely hard over the last two weeks to put together a plan that would see alternative cost-cutting measures considered before the nuclear option of mass lay-offs was pressed.
“The union’s proposals were also grounded in the assumption that government supports were being worked on.
“Where are those proposals from government, and were they ever formally made in the first place? Government owes it to the workers at Tara Mines to fully disclose the level and range of supports they were prepared to provide to the company.
“Last week I asked three government Minister’s why they haven’t introduced a modern German-style short-time working scheme that would assist workers in companies experiencing short term trading difficulties in order to keep people in work.
“The answers were unacceptable, with constant references made to the Pathway to Work strategy and that consideration is still being given to “building on the EWSS/TWSS and drawing on existing international models, explore the possibility of introducing a new Short Time Work Support scheme to enable employers retain people on their payroll in response to short-duration shocks to employment”.
“The government has been sitting on this Labour and trade union inspired labour market proposal for three years now. How many more years will pass and how many good jobs will be lost or subject to lay-off before this government gets its act together”?