Emerald City Production Limited is a film animation company which makes full length animated feature films. It is based in Dún Laoghaire and has a full-time workforce of 45 and employs a further 20 people on a freelance basis. Emerald City is a wholly owned subsidiary of the New York based D.L. Taffner. It has been in Dún Laoghaire for over five years and has reputedly received £500,000 in various IDA grants and aids. On Wednesday, 6 February, its employees were informed that their employment was being terminated. They were given 30 days' notice of redundancy to take effect on 11 March next unless the parent company can get a buyer in the meantime. The employees were all asked to leave the premises and the locks were changed on the doors.
The reasons given to the employees for the closure related to the company's alleged financial difficulties. Both the closure and the stated reasons for it, were a major surprise to the employees. Over the past five years they had never been told of any financial or trading difficulties. Indeed, they had been led to believe that there were orders for the next two years. Since Christmas they had been working flat out to complete films and they finalised their last film late on the Saturday night before the closure. Indeed, some of them were working so much overtime that they were taking pills to stay awake.
The closure of this company is a major blow to the employees, to Dún Laoghaire and to the film industry in Ireland. Dún Laoghaire is an ideal location for an animation film company because the Dún Laoghaire College of Art and Design specialises in animation studies.
I ask the Minister to intervene in this case and to use his good offices and those of the IDA to secure a new owner for this company. I ask him, if he has not already done so, to make contact with the parent company and to find out the real reasons for the sudden closure of this successful enterprise and what efforts are now being made to secure a new owner so that these 60 jobs in Dún Laoghaire can be saved.
I ask him to let us know how much State aid has been given to this company and whether it will be repaid. Was there a five year agreement with the IDA which has now expired and are the company now simply pulling up and getting out?
The more I hear about this company, the less impressed I am with them. They are a strictly anti-trade union company. When six employees attempted to join a union over a year ago, they were all either dismissed or squeezed out.
Dún Laoghaire cannot afford another closure. As it is, there are almost 7,000 out of work in the constituency and there is very little industry or prospects for industrial development in the area. This industry was ideally suited to the area and I had hoped that it would grow in the years ahead.
This industry should not simply be allowed to close. Over the past five years a pool of talent has been assembled in Emerald City which should not be dissolved. The films they made have won world-wide recognition. The enterprise is ideally located beside Dún Laoghaire port, on the DART line and close to the Dún Laoghaire College of Art and Design. It should, therefore, be perfectly possible to secure a new owner for this firm. I know the Minister has with some success, intervened in closures in the past and I now ask him to interest himself in this case, if he has not already done so, and to make every effort to save this company and these jobs.
