I thank you for giving me the opportunity to raise this unfortunate intended cut-down on jobs at the Rowntree-Mackintosh factory. This is a very old factory, well established in the Inchicore-Kilmainham area. Its workforce are mainly drawn from the Ballyfermot-Inchicore area, which has suffered a high unemployment rate in the past number of years. Therefore, the intended cutback on jobs will cause tremendous hardship in the area.
The factory used to be Van Houten's before 1935-36 and then it became known as the old Choc Coid Cocoa Works before it became Rowntrees. In 1960 there was an amalgamation with Mackintosh. There are 560 people working there now, a tremendous workforce in any one factory, given the tendency in modern industrial premises to cut back on workforces. The reason for the large workforce is that it manufactures very labour intensive products.
The unfortunate thing about this cutback of 380 jobs is that the labour intensive output of the factory, the products they are putting out, are the ones affected. That is the reason given for the cutback of jobs. The factory had a troubled industrial relations history up to 1984 when there was a loss of £428,000, which was attributed largely to a tenweek strike. Profits had been declining and unfortunately in the previous couple of years there had not been a good profit flow.
Much of the criticism levelled at the workforce ended in 1984. Since then there has not been the loss of a single hour of production. People may be inclined to blame the unions — in a long established company like this there were nine different unions — but they worked together well of late. The Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union forewarned of the possibility of this cutback happening if the company did not invest in new plant and new technology and if it did not, like some other companies in this industry, become streamlined and concentrate on single products in the different factories. Rowntree-Mackintosh are unfortunate in the sense that there are several other plants owned by Rowntree-Mackintosh in Britain and Ireland and the Kilmainham factory is being sacrificed by the parent company. It has been suggested that the Dublin factory would become a warehouse only, providing work for only 120 people.
There has been a vote of confidence by the company by investing £1,500,000 in three lines being manufactured there. The company have admitted that they failed to build up improved exports, and blamed uncompetitive high production costs and a bad industrial realations record that has been described as one of the worst in the country — that is according to The Irish Times of 7 March.
I regard that as unfair given the response of the workforce and the unions in the past couple of years. This factory may be a sacrificial lamb, being the Irish operation of a mainly British company, and the labour intensive Irish sector may be sacrificed. There has been a reliance on a costly low volume product and a failure to centralise the manufacture of individual products at one location. This could have been avoided by management if they had had a different approach to production.
This plant has been the source of stable employment for one of the most deprived parts of the city. In Inchicore only 4 per cent of the population get a crack at third level education and they make up 28 per cent of the population of St. Patrick's Institution and Mountjoy. In Ballyfermot, from which a large number of the workers come, an area with between 40,000 and 50,000 people, only 1 per cent get a crack at third level education and they make up 17 per cent of St. Patrick's Institution and Mountjoy. This disemployment is being visited on them on top of all their other problems.
I draw the Minister's attention to the history of job losses in those two areas. With the shutdown of Killeen Paper Mills some years ago there was a loss of 750 jobs, never to be replaced. The shutdown of Clondalkin Paper Mills caused 470 job losses, but because it was saved and reopened by the Government there will be a return of 280 jobs, leaving a net loss of 190 jobs. Within a couple of hundred yards of that factory we lost the Swan Laundry and a couple of hundred yards down the road we had the closure of Booth Poole some years ago. We had the closure of the Spa Road, Inchicore, works where they made buses for many years. We had a huge cutback in the Inchicore Engineering Works. The area is unfortunate and it needs careful attention.
