Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Unfortunately, the situation is a voluntary engagement between employer and employee, but we will pursue that issue in so far as we can with the employer, as we undertook today in our meetings with the workers' representatives.

As the Deputies know, Microtherm was established in Ireland in 1975 and employs 46 people in Bruff, County Limerick, where it manufactures thermostats for the white goods market. Unfortunately, the manufacture of thermostats is now uneconomic in Ireland as the sale price no longer covers the production cost. Over the past few years, I understand that the company's head office had been supplying orders to keep its Irish operation in production. This has been erratic, with orders varying from month to month resulting in the entire work force working part-time or full-time as the need arose to fill orders. However, the owners have concluded that the operation at Bruff is insolvent and a creditors' meeting is being called. I understand that the creditors' meeting is scheduled for 23 October 2006 and at that stage a liquidator is likely to be appointed. The general manager called a meeting of all staff yesterday morning. I understand he had no alternative but to cease production and close down the plant.

The role of the industrial training agency, FÁS, will now be particularly important for the workers. The company has already been requested to discuss the opportunities of operative retraining with its staff with a view to following up with FÁS. We have been doing this well in recent redundancies. FÁS has gone in early to provide one-to-one training programmes for the workers and to see if it can locate alternative employment for the workers through its wider job contact capacity.

The most recent live register figures, for September 2006, were released by the Central Statistics Office last week. The figure for County Limerick is 7,205, which is down significantly on last month's figure of 8,253. It is important to give the overall backdrop. Although it is no consolation to the workers involved, it shows a general buoyancy in employment in County Limerick.

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