Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghlacadh leat as ucht teacht isteach tráthnóna agus éisteacht le achainní láidir go ndéanfá rud éigin d'oibritheoirí atá ligthe chun siúil ag monarcha Farah i nGaillimh.
I thank the Minister for replying to this matter. It is amazing that some people seem to count more than others. When staff were laid off in Dublin companies not so long ago high profile Ministers were involved, task forces were established and great efforts were made to provide alternative employment for those workers.
Recently workers in the Farah plant in Galway in which there was a fire some months ago were informed their employment would cease from 25 March. Many of those employees, who have worked for a long time in the clothing industry, face a bleak future. When Digital closed a number of years ago a task force was set up and every effort was made to attract an alternative suitable enterprise. That effort met with great success and the Minister visited the constituency recently to make a new announcement. When Packard closed there was a great public outcry, the closure generated great public interest and urgent action was taken.
This decision will involve the loss of 70 jobs in Galway and skills built up over a lifetime will be redundant. There is an urgent need to provide alternative employment and training for those people. There is no point telling us that many jobs are being created in Galway because most of them are in high tech industries. The reality is that without radical retraining many of the employees who will be laid off will not find their way into those new industries. Many of them need to find employment in a similar industry.
Farah is the last significant manufacturing facility on the west side of Galway. I hope the Minister will set up a special task force to oversee the work of providing training for the employees of Farah to ensure they do not become another statistic on the live register of long-term unemployed and that he will charge the task force with finding suitable employment for them.
Losing a job is traumatic. It does not make any difference that 70 as opposed to 300 or 400 jobs will be lost in this plant. The experience of losing their jobs was as traumatic for those 70 people as it was for employees in the other places to which I referred.
As stated earlier, unlike other recent redundancies, there is a further difficulty in this case where, because of changing skill levels and new technology, those being laid off are particularly vulnerable when it comes to obtaining alternative employment. I ask the Minister to ensure that the same priority and intensity of effort — establishment of task forces, provision of alternative sites, etc. — be given to providing alternative employment for the former employees of Farah as was invested in the more high profile instances of job losses which occurred in recent years.
Tá mé buíoch don Aire as ucht teacht isteach tráthnóna. Ba faillí uafásach é dá bhfágfaí na daoine seo gan jabanna sa bhfadtéarma agus muna ndéantaí iarracht speisialta go mór mór nuair a chuirtear san áireamh an seans mór atá ann go mbeidh sé thar a bheith deacair ag go leor de na fostaithe seo fostaíocht eile a fháil gan iarracht mhór Rialtais.
