Statements shall be made now on the Digital plant in Galway and the following arrangements shall apply: the opening statement of the Minister for Enterprise and Employment and of the main Opposition spokespersons for the Fine Gael Party, the Progressive Democrats and the Technical Group shall not exceed ten minutes in each case; the statement of each other Member called on shall not exceed five minutes and the Minister or Minister of State shall be called upon not later than 4.40 p.m. to make a statement in reply not exceeding five minutes.
Digital Plant, Galway: Statements.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I issued the following statement today — I will read it for the benefit of the House — in relation to the announcement made and conveyed to me at approximately 9.30-10 o'clock this morning: This is a major disappointment to the Government and the people of Galway in particular who have served the company loyally over the past 22 years. The upheavel this decision will cause to the community and the economy of Galway cannot be overstated.
Support for the Digital operation in Galway was never an issue as Ireland bettered anything on offer and, indeed, made certain innovative suggestions to secure Digital in Galway. The deciding issue appears to be Digital's perception of the need to have a continued presence its major European market, the United Kingdom.
I reject the basis for this perception and point to the many companies who are successful in penetrating and building across Europe from Ireland. Their broader vision of the potential of the wider European market reinforces their commitment to Ireland as a manufacturing base.
The undertaking by Digital to upgrade the existing Galway software operation to become one of two global locations for software development is an endorsement of Galway's existing capabilities and a reaffirmation of the quality of Ireland's dynamic software sector.
In discussion with Digital headquarters in Boston, I was reassured that the company will allow 12 months to phase down the operations at Galway and to enable the marketing of the facility for new investment; existing Irish suppliers to Digital Galway will continue as preferred suppliers to Digital, Ayr, Scotland; the first class Galway facility will be made available to potential investors on attractive terms.
The shock and anxiety experienced today by all those concerned demands an urgent response from the Government and its agencies. Today I have asked the IDA to immediately devise and implement a priority programme of investment and enterprise promotion for Galway with the target of achieving the maximum number of new jobs in the city and county within the one year timeframe conceded by the company. My colleagues and I in Government will be working closely with the IDA and other development agencies to ensure that this programme is successful.
I will read an extract from the press statement issued by Mr. Kieran McGowan, chief executive of the IDA, giving details of the action that the IDA now proposes to take in relation to the programme to which I referred:
1. A high level task force, comprising senior managers in IDA with long track record in delivering results, will immediately commence intensive marketing of Galway as an excellent centre for new high-tech investment. There is immediately available 80,000 sq. ft. of factory buildings to accommodate such investment, in addition to the facilities which Digital Corporation DEC will be making available.
2. A programme of enterprise promotion and contact will be put in place to work with Digital staff to ensure that every effort is made to form new businesses which can grow out of their long experience and track records in working with one of the world's leading companies in high technology manufacturing.
3. An increased effort will be made, backed by a flexible and wide range of incentives, to stimulate more new and expansion of small business investments by local people in Galway to help alleviate the impact of the DEC job losses. There is a particular opportunity right now to work in partnership with the large number of foreign companies in Ireland who want to source more Irish components and services here in Ireland. For example, in electronics alone, there is a short-term potential for up to 3,000 new jobs.
4. IDA people, at top level, will also be immediately available to join with local leadership in Galway to formulate any other plans that have prospect of increasing the prosperity of business, and its employment impact, in Galway.
The Government has been aware of this problem for a number of months. Indeed, for nine months during the period of office of the previous Government the precarious position of Digital's hardware area was brought to the attention of the then Minister for Industry and Commerce through the IDA. Following the closure of Digital in Clonmel the warning bells started to sound. Those bells go back five years when Digital, in gearing up for the next stage in technology, took a strategic decision to invest in Scotland.
Nothwithstanding that, I wish to assure the House and those who are of the opinion that the Government was lax or too late in intervening to try to save the hardware jobs in Digital, that from the very first day I was appointed Minister the situation in Digital was brought to my attention. From the beginning I was in regular, if not daily, contact with the IDA, both directly and indirectly through officials in my Department. We intervened immediately we were requested by the IDA in terms of our physical presence in Boston. I responded to a very generous and non-partisan offer of help from the Mayor of Galway, Deputy McCormack, to make himself available should that be considered useful. Following consultations with the Taoiseach, I availed of that offer. The Mayor of Galway and the Galway city and county manager accompanied me to Boston to make the final presentation. Regretfully, I must announce to this House, and to the people of Galway, that despite the best, united efforts of everybody in this House and in the IDA, we were not able to dissuade Digital management in Boston from their perception of their advantage from the point of their shareholders and their company of the position they would obtain by being based in Ayr with their hardware manufacturing.
The effort of the IDA in conjunction with the 800 workers whose jobs will now be phased out over the next 12 months will be unstinting in our determination to find new forms of wealth creation and job creation.
I wish to share my time with Deputy Connaughton.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
The loss of 800 jobs, probably seen as the most secure in the country, is a tragedy for Galway, the west and the nation. The families concerned are devastated. Where can they now go for work? What hope can they offer their children of being able to continue their education in the area in which they grew up? This sense of loss is so overwhelming that it is important this debate should give some sense of hope to the people concerned, and I hope that it does, or at least some sense of understanding of what happened. This loss, the sense of fear and foreboding will be felt by many who still hold jobs in the commercial sector. It will accentuate the caution and the aversion to risk that has already been generated by the highest interest rates in the history of the State and by the anti-jobs element of the budget just published by the Government.
The managing director of the IDA told us at lunchtime today that these jobs were safe for Galway up to three weeks ago and had been lost to Scotland in the past three weeks. It appears that the Minister's intervention, despite the polite comments from Digital, was too little and too late. I regret in particular that the Taoiseach, a native of the west, and the Tánaiste who also comes from the western seaboard, did not visit Digital headquarter to underline the case that, no doubt, was made with sincerity, if belatedly, by the Minister for Enterprise and Employment.
These jobs were lost to Scotland because Digital felt it could serve its British customers better from Ayr than from Galway. It would appear that the rhetoric about 1992, about Ireland being part of a Single Market, including Britain, counted for very little in the hard commercial decision-making in the boardrooms in Massachusetts. Making complaints to Brussels at this stage is to late. What can Commissioner Van Miert do at this stage to save the jobs in Digital? He can do nothing. Why were complaints not made three weeks ago?
The loss of highly skilled jobs in a company that had invested so heavily in new technology and set such a good example in research and development in Ireland, creates a sense of vulnerability about all the 28,000 jobs in computer hardware manufacturing in Ireland, our biggest single export sector in value terms. It is clear that being in high technology does not guarantee job security. The vulnerability of mainframe computer manufacturers, in view of the 30 per cent overcapacity in the industry worldwide and the market trends towards personal computers and away from mainframe, has been known for two or three years or more. It would appear that Governments led by Deputy Reynolds over the past two or three years did not devise a plan — and there is no evidence of one at this stage — to deal with this generalised trend in computer manufacture, a sector on which we depend so much. It is clear that strategic anticipiation of problems of this nature can save jobs. For example, Ericsson once manufactured telephone cables. It was able, by good strategic planning with the aid of the IDA and an intelligent Government, to transform itself out of cable manufacturing and into an area where it is now employing just as many people at higher wages in software. Why was the same level of intelligent anticipation of problems in the Ericsson case some years ago not brought to bear in the Digital case now? That question has yet to be answered by the Government.
The Government urgently needs a strategic plan for electronics sketching a vision for the future. There has been no evidence of that to date. The IDA needs to recognise that the maintenance and upgrading of existing jobs is just as important as attracting new jobs from overseas. Saving jobs that will otherwise be lost may not be the stuff of ministerial press release, but it is even more important than announcements of new jobs, some of which may never be created.
We need a taskforce in Galway to find new work opportunities for Digital's highly skilled workforce. This mix of complimentary skills, if broken up, can never be put together again. It is important that any action taken by the Government and the IDA is immediate. Taking action in a year or two will be too late. It is by indicating a will to take action along those lines that the Government and this House will convince the workers and their families who have suffered such a devastating blow today that we care about their situation.
Last Monday I accompanied a Digital worker to Galway County Council to help him to solve a problem in relation to planning permission. At the time the man was devastated at the thought of losing his job. He said that if he lost his job this week he would go back to the council office, tear up the planning permission application and ask the council to build his house at the taxpayers' expense. That man has no job today and, worse, no prospect of getting one. That story, repeated 780 times in Galway this evening in a county that already has 15,000 people out of work adds up to a story of bitterness, devastation, shock, horror and loneliness. Can anybody really understand what goes on in the mind of a person who is highly trained and motivated and who entered into mortgage arrangements in keeping with his financial circumstances at the time who now sees his world crashing down around him? I assure this House that the workers of Galway feel literally sick this evening. They have no idea what went wrong. They had excellent productivity, excellent markets, and Galway seemed more secure than any other Digital unit in the States or Europe.
I have some very searching questions to put in the few minutes at my disposal, questions that are being asked by thousands of people around the country. Where were the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs when all this was going on? They acted like Pontius Pilate and just washed their hands of the problem when they knew what the final outcome was likely to be, which is outrageous behaviour. Whether they would have had any effect is not the central issue, but their cowardice in keeping a low profile when a more aggressive attitude was called for is the really sickening thing about this. When the Taoiseach ignored this problem last week I knew that the Galway workers were doomed. If they were to be saved the Taoiseach, not Minister Quinn, would have gone to Boston.
Another question concerns the Government's reaction to the alleged intervention by the UK Government to keep Digital open in Ayr, Scotland. I raised this matter yesterday on the Order of Business but the Taoiseach just shrugged his shoulders, as he often does. It appears that the Government has an inferiority complex when dealing with our European partners. EC competition law has definite ground rules to prevent certain financial inducements being used to attract industry to member states, otherwise small countries like ours would be swamped in Dutch auctions.
I call on the Taoiseach and his Ministers to send another ministerial team and, perhaps, to go himself with the IDA to Digital in Boston immediately to seek an expansion of the software facility in Galway with a view to increasing its workforce very rapidly. In addition, the IDA must be instructed to place Galway at the top if its priority list and to scour the world to attract a flagship industry to Galway.
Galway has had a very bad record of replacing flagship industries. The Sugar Company in Tuam which closed down with the loss of 600 jobs was not replaced. Tynagh Mines in Loughrea provided 500 jobs and not one is left. The peat briquette factory at Ballyforan closed with the loss of 400 jobs. If the Minister cannot do better than he did in the past, the people in Galway will not believe a single word he says.
It is disquieting that the Government politicians from west Galway have kept a very low profile. I am surprised at this, on other occasions one could not keep them out of the limelight, but this time they are extraordinarily quiet.
With all my fellow citizens of Galway I am deeply shocked at the announcement this morning that the manufacturing unit of our great flagship industry, Digital at Ballybrit, will close. In an earlier debate on this subject I mentioned that I was present 22 years ago as a Minister in the Government that approved a grant for this factory. I was present at the contract signing ceremony when there were only four or five people employed by the company. I saw the company grow from that small start to an industry which today employs 1,100 in its manufacturing plant and in its software unit and which also provided temporary employment for over 200 people. Many more people are employed in all the companies throughout County Galway and in other parts of Ireland which are subcontracting to that company. All together we are talking about 2,000 or more jobs. This is the most terrible disaster that has struck industrial employment in all my years in this House.
This will have a severe effect on employment in Galway city and the wider region outside the factory because of the link between the main company and the smaller companies that were encouraged to develop. My heart goes out to the workers and their families who are the immediate sufferers in this tragedy.
I heard what the Minister said about a task force. As a Galway Deputy I call on him to commit the full resources of the State to immediately establish an alternative industry in the Galway region.
We have learned a lesson from this; all along the only people who had access to what was happening were senior executives in the IDA, the Ministers of the Government and the Taoiseach. There was no information if one was not in the Government. Until 4 November my knowledge of this situation was up-to-date; I was in close contact with my colleagues Deputy O'Malley, who, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, was greatly concerned about the threat. I cannot understand why, in the intervening period, no political action seems to have been taken if we are to believe what the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Deputy Quinn, told the House here earlier. He said that one of his predecessors had gone to America twice. I had to inquire from an official afterwards to whom he was referring; it was Deputy O'Malley. There have been three Ministers in that Department since Deputy O'Malley resigned in early November. The former Minister, Mr Flynn, would have been informed immediately of the threat to Digital. What did he do? He went to Brussels and was replaced by Deputy Bertie Ahern, who had responsibility for the Department of Industry and Commerce as well as the Department of Finance. He would have been informed immediately by the IDA chief executive of the threat. The Taoiseach would also have been kept informed about this issue because it was so big. When the present Minister came into office he admitted, in the course of a debate in the House, that he had been told the company was under serious threat. Everybody has known about the threat to the computer industry, because of the major revolution there in the past two years. In this case, it boiled down to one question: would the Ayr or Galway factory be closed?
It is a matter of great regret to have to criticise the Ministers who succeeded Deputy O'Malley for not having gone to Boston or not having made arrangements to meet the decision-maker in Digital, Bob Palmer. Surely in modern day business it is essential to know the person making the decision, especially when that decision will have a traumatic effect, not only on employment in one locality in the west but all over the country? I point an accusing finger at the Minister, the Taoiseach and the two previous incumbents in the Minister's office for not having done the obvious thing, built up a relationship with the chief executive of Digital, for not having met him, spoken to him and built up a relationship with him. That was the way in which my colleague, Deputy O'Malley carried out his responsibilities as Minister for Industry and Commerce. Unfortunately, that did not happen in this instance.
The Minister and workers in the factory have confirmed it was understood until January that, on the straight issue of Ayr versus Galway, the Galway plant was the favourite as, on every assessment, it was the more efficient and stronger plant and had greater productivity. What happened to make the company decide to close the Galway plant and transfer its operations to the plant at Ayr? Political intervention led to that decision. Even though the IDA officials wore a track flying the Atlantic it was far beyond their capacity to salvage the plant and solve this problem; it was a matter for a higher authority. We lost the plant because of the intervention of senior politicians in the United Kingdom. If the Minister wishes to deny that he may, but in my discussions with him, which were confidential until today, I understood that was also his opinion. It is well known and accepted that John Major, Mr. Heseltine and Ian Laing had a role in this issue. Political action on their part in networking the system won the day for Ayr, even though on a one to one comparison the Galway factory stood head and shoulders over it. I went into some detail in my contribution in an earlier debate in outlining the strength, capacity and capabilities of the Galway plant vis-á-vis Ayr.
The workers have been offered a redundancy package of six weeks pay for every year worked in the plant. As 800 people are being thrown out of work, there will be massive problems in the repayment of mortgages. Lump sum payments will be made to the workers on the basis of six weeks pay per year of employment. Will the Minister confirm that tax will not be deducted from that lump sum to enable the recipients to meet their mortgage commitments and to hold on to their homes? Otherwise, there will be a total collapse of the economy in Galway and hundreds of houses will be repossessed. These families will not find alternative employment in the Galway area or any other part of the country which would enable them to continue to repay their mortgages. I ask for special concessions for those families who are faced with this huge calamity.
In future these issues should not be left solely in the hands of the IDA and Ministers. There should be an involvement from the bottom up in this task force. Businessmen and community and industrial leaders in Galway should have a role to play in promoting their town. They should not be left totally dependent on an organisation located in Dublin, with the possibility of no information being communicated to the people in Galway city. Part of this tragedy is that we were kept in the dark and those who knew about it did not take action in time.
The announcement of the loss of 800 jobs in Digital is certainly a black day for Galway and the country. It is an announcement everybody had feared for some time but hoped would never take place. It marks one of the blackest days in our recent economic history. Even at a time when factory closures are commonplace, the scale of the job losses in Galway is shocking and the potential economic damage to the city and the region is frightening. On a pro rata basis, the loss would be equivalent to the loss of approximately 4,000 jobs in the Dublin area. Of course, the direct job losses are only part of the picture. We cannot even guess at the indirect job losses which will follow in supplier companies, in the motor trade, retail, leisure and transport areas, and construction arising from the lay-offs and the consequent reduced money flow in the Galway region.
On a personal level, we must extend our sympathy to the Digital employees who stand to lose their jobs and who face the dismal prospect of joining approximately 16,000 people already on the live register in the Galway city and county area in the demoralising search for non-existent jobs. While the Digital job losses are clearly a major embarrassment to the new Fianna Fáil-Labour Party Government, we do not take any pleasure from it, the tragedy for Galway is far too serious for that. However, the Government can be criticised for failing to be alert to the Digital plans, for failing to react with sufficient speed and then attempting to cover its political tracks by engaging in an elaborate public relations charade by dispatching the Government jet across the Atlantic.
The responsibility for the Digital disaster does not rest solely with the Government. Responsibility must be shared by successive Governments who have held office over the past decade and who have ignored the conclusions drawn in virtually every study of Irish industry from Telesis to Culliton. After all, it is not as if the Digital experience was new or that the Government should have been taken by surprise by the decision of a computer giant to dump people on the dole. Digital now takes its place on the role of dishonour alongside Nixdorf, Prime Computers, Wang, Apple, Seagate and others who have been prepared to take the money and run. Will the Minister, in replying to the debate, give some indication of the amount of money provided for Digital in terms of grants, aids and concessions and whether any of this money will be returned? Irish workers have paid a very high price for the failure of successive Governments to ensure the development of indigenous industry and the very heavy reliance on footloose multinationals for job creation. The multinational companies simply follow the market and the money. They will go wherever the profits can be maximised and where they stand to receive the most generous grants and concessions. They have no social conscience and have little regard for the human consequences of closing factories and putting people on the dole. The fact that the competition for the last number of weeks was between the workers in Galway and the workers in Ayr has been lost sight of.
I hope even at this stage that the Government will have learned something from this latest and very painful lesson. First, it should take steps to establish procedures for identifying jobs which could be in danger and ensuring that whatever intervention is possible is taken in advance of irrevocable decisions by company boards in far away places. Secondly, they must now move to implement the recommendations of Telesis and Culliton and ensure the development of indigenous companies based on our natural resources.
I welcome any jobs we can secure from the multinational section, but I question the value of spending so much money on attracting jobs which more and more can be considered only temporary. The Culliton Report stated:
It remains true that, while investment in the form of isolated production units of foreign multinationals have made enormous contributions over the years, reliance on this source of industrial growth is not enough. If Irish industry is to make the transition to the levels of performance to which we aspire there must be a greater contribution from firms that have deeper roots in the economy and especially from home managed firms.
Deputy Molloy made a comparison between Ayr and Galway and stated the clear lead that Galway had in relation to productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. Experience has shown that is a low priority for such multinationals when it comes to choosing between one location and another. I am not arguing for low productivity, I am simply making the point that it is not necessarily the only basis on which such companies make their decision. The fact that Digital has about one quarter of its turnover sales in the United Kingdom was a major factor in choosing Ayr.
There is an interesting article in today's edition of The Irish Times by G.T. Wrixon, the director of the national micro electronics research centre at University College, Cork. He raised pertinent questions in relation to how we should keep those mulitnationals linked to this economy. He said we must ask a series of questions about the type of strategies we need to develop, not just today but for the future and to constantly readjust them. Despite all that, at a time when the Government is forecasting an increase of 26,000 in the unemployment numbers in the next 12 months, the tragedy of Digital is compounded by the failure of the Minister for Finance to produce any significant job creation initiatives in yesterday's budget. Will the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, when he addresses the House in relation to the budget over the next week, indicate if he intends to meet the expected deadline referred to in Culliton, that its main recommendations will be implemented by the end of this year if certain political decisions are taken? Will the Minister indicate if that is the intention despite the fact that yesterday's budget did little in real terms to create a significant number of jobs?
Workers in Digital who knew their jobs were in danger, and others who spent months or years on the dole who looked in hope to yesterday's budget, must be bitterly disappointed. The sort of minor measures announced yesterday by the Minister might have been appropriate if we had an unemployment level of 50,000 or 60,000, but it now stands at more than 300,000. This is a crisis and the budget has done nothing to reflect the urgency of the position. Deputy Rabbitte asked about our monetary policy and our attitude to the whole question of interest rates. How can we seriously talk, as the Minister for Enterprise and Employment did, about growth in the indigenous sector when we compare our interest rates with those in the United Kingdom? What impact did that differential in interest rates have on Digital's decision to relocate its manufacturing sector?
There is also a need to look at where we can potentially create jobs. In recent years the Government has let 3,000 people go from the local authority area. That is equivalent to three or four Digitals in terms of the number of jobs lost. The Government also needs to examine that area if we are serious about tackling, not just the crisis in Galway, but all over the State.
Tá mé chun mo chuid ama a roinnt leis an teachta Michael Kitt. The Opposition implied that Government Deputies were quiet while this was taking place. As somebody who devoted a lifetime to job creation I resent that implication because, although we did not receive media attention, we were lobbying to the best of our ability to save those jobs. My heart goes out to the people who will lose jobs in the coming year. I know the trauma and shock they will experience and redundancy payments do not compensate for the loss of a job. Those who will not get alternative employment need ongoing support, advice and help because there is nothing more lonely than to be made redundant, to lose contact with workmates and left to one's own devices. People who have been out of work for a year or so have come to me when it begins to bite. The suffering, loneliness and financial problems that arise at that stage are what we must prepare for now.
Urgent consideration should be given to people whose unemployment benefit runs out because if they have saved their redundancy money they will be means tested on the residual funds. Will the Taoiseach and the Minister examine that matter and consider the question of ongoing advice? It is very important that a breathing space of one year has been given so that we can get an alternative industry.
Ag deireadh thiar thall, deirim mar dhuine atá i ndáilcheantar Ghaeltachta, go bhfuil monarcha eile, Telemara, nach bhfuil caint ar bith uirthi. Tá áthas orm go bhfuil geallúint faighte go leanfaidh na conarthaí atá acu siúd le Ayr, mar is ag easpórtáil go hAlban a bhíodar, buíochas le Dia. Má tá rud amháin sabháilte inniu, is cosúil go bhfuil na jabanna ar an gCeathrú Rua réasúnta slán faoin socrú a rinneadh.
I also extend my sympathy to the 780 workers who are being let go in Digital. They have served Digital well and Digital has also served Galway and the country well. I know there will be criticism of the Government but the Taoiseach and the various Ministers have done all they can at this difficult time. I thank, in particular, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment for meeting the Galway Oireachtas Members and giving us details of the efforts made by him, the Mayor of Galway and others in this regard. The Mayor of Galway did not think that the trip to Boston was a charade. The Minister told us of the efforts he made in contacting and alerting the two Commissioners, including the Commissioner for competition and I hope those matters will be investigated. It is important to set up county enterprise boards, in Galway in particular, for which a sum of £25 million was announced yesterday. The Minister should again meet the Oireachtas Members from Galway to discuss how the enterprise board in Galway can be helped. It is important that the skilled workforce in Galway is retained. There is a huge facility in Galway. It was described today on the news as similar in size to four Croke Parks. The facility contains £100 million worth of equipment. It is first class and must be used by the agencies to ensure that the skilled workforce will obtain employment in the city and county of Galway.
I will respond briefly to the sentiments expressed and the points raised. Deputy John Bruton, Deputy O'Malley and Deputy Molloy are well aware from their own experience of Cabinet, particularly Deputies Bruton and O'Malley, of the relationship between the Department of Industry and Commerce, as it then was, and the IDA. The Department would not want to mislead the House by insinuating that the IDA did nothing between 4 November and January and that the IDA's judgment——
Nobody said that.
(Interruptions.)
I did not interrupt the Deputy, perhaps I have touched a nerve if the Deputy is rushing to interrupt me so quickly. The Deputy's vast experience should tell him that if the IDA felt, on a matter of such importance, between 4 November and 12 January that a ministerial presence was needed in Boston, it would have requested it and that the Taoiseach or the Minister of the day would have responded. I assure this House that the IDA did not, between 4 November and 12 January, request any Minister to go to Boston.
Did it make that request after 12 January?
What happened after 12 January?
After 12 January I was kept apprised of events on a daily basis and I responded immediately when I was asked to go to Boston by the IDA.
Eventually.
We are not doing this House any great service by having this kind of debate. The relationship between the IDA and respective Ministers is such that I responded to the crisis in precisely the same manner as no doubt previous Ministers in the same office would have done.
Mr. Kenny
Why did the Minister not bring Mr. John Major with him?
I assure Deputies that if the Taoiseach had been asked by the IDA between 4 November and 12 January to travel to Boston he would have done so but he was not asked so let us lay to rest that political charge.
The Minister would not have gone either if it had not been for the call from the Mayor of Galway.
That is not the case.
It certainly is.
The Deputies have put questions to the Minister and he has two minutes remaining, please let him respond.
Thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I do not see of what benefit this is to the workers in Galway. The second point I want to make is that we are in danger of making a desperate situation worse by talking the way Deputy Connaughton did to the effect that——
Worse, for the 800 workers? Who is to blame? Ask the workers if it could be worse.
Let me respond——
Why did the Minister not learn from what happened at Clonmel?
If Deputy Connaughton and others believe that workers who have a year in which to look for alternative employment, with the skills they obtained from Digital and the back-up from the IDA to which I referred——
We have heard it all before.
——have no hope of getting employment, then they are spreading pessimism and are not holding out any hope to those workers.
They did not get jobs in the past.
The Deputy is not instilling hope by saying——
Tell that to the sugar factory workers in Tuam.
What I am saying to the Deputy is that if that is the——
It was not replaced in Deputy Connaughton's time.
The Deputy's party did not replace it, even though it said it would.
(Interruptions.)
Please allow the Minister to continue without interruption.
The SIPTU official for Galway made a plea to all Members in this House——
The Minister's credibility is not very high.
——that it would not serve the workers of Galway to turn this into a political football.
To keep away from the Minister.
I am sorry that the Fine Gael Deputies appear to want to do that. I will turn to two constructive points made by Deputy De Rossa. The first was in relation to the value of the grants to Digital. If one includes the Clonmel plant, approximately £15 million grants in all were given to Digital over a period of time. The wage bill, including that for the software workers from Digital plants in Galway this year was of the order of £43 million so, in terms of value for taxpayer's money, we received more than our share.
Finally, whether Digital was Irish owned or internationally owned, the technology which it employed and which it is attempting to sell on an international market is no longer capable of finding a market because of the rapid transformation in the industry. The people who know this best are the people in Galway, those at the coalface in Digital.
The people in Ayr know it.
The Deputies made a request for local involvement and I want to respond. In the first instance I extend an invitation to any other plants and workers in other factories who use technology in their jobs and who will know before any Member of this House whether their livelihoods are at risk from technological advance, to contact their Deputies, the IDA or their trade union so that we learn from the lessons of recent events. Bemoaning what occurred, in a manner that perhaps could be misinterpreted, is of no consolation to the workers in Galway.
The Minister is sympathetic.
Let me conclude in reference to the statement made by Deputy O Cuív——
Your time is up, Minister. I will allow you a final comment.
What about the point I made?
I think I am entitled to injury time.
Will the Minister reply to the point I raised about the lump sum tax?
The Deputies will not let him speak.
I tried to respond to all the points raised.
I am bound by the fact that the debate on these statements must now conclude.
Let me make one final comment in relation to Deputy Ó Cuív and Deputy Molloy's point concerning assistance to workers. Everything will be done by my Department in relation to placement in alternative employment, including the most favourable tax regime possible to assist them in making the transition to, I hope, other employment. This will be done in consultation with the relevant authorities.