Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

Yesterday's confirmation that approximately 450 jobs are to be lost at Cadbury over three years is a shocking hammer blow for Coolock and Dublin's north side. Of the 1,500 member workforce at Cadbury, workers in Rathmore, County Kerry, and in Tallaght in west Dublin, will be affected but as 1,100 workers are based in the Coolock plant the most serious impact will be felt there.

My first thoughts are with those workers and their families who face the prospect of being made redundant over the coming months and years. This will be particularly difficult for many of the senior men and women who have worked at the factory for decades. These job losses will deeply affect Coolock district and its environs where in some areas there is up to 20% and 25% unemployment, despite the Celtic tiger. Cadbury has a decades-long connection with Coolock since its arrival in Ireland in 1932 and the factory on Oscar Traynor Road is a famous local landmark, providing work for generations of people.

People were always interested in working for Cadbury with intense competition for jobs as the company provided good wages and working conditions. Cadbury executives also supported employment initiatives undertaken by the Coolock Development Council, of which I was the first chairman in the mid-1980s, the Northside Partnership and the Northside Centre for the Unemployed. Their assistance was very important in the early days of those organisations and from that point of view too yesterday was a sad day.

Cadbury management has said it intends to undertake a change programme which will involve the investment of €100 million over the next three years and that it has invested €80 million since 1999 to restore competitiveness. I hope it follows through with this and new technology and that the remaining 700 or 800 jobs will be secure. This hammer blow to our region comes on top of a steady haemorrhaging of jobs from the local industrial estates, particularly Clonshaugh Industrial and Business Park which has lost dozens of IT companies to eastern Europe and Asia over the past seven years. These include flagship companies such as Gateway 2000 and Data Products, and Saronix and Terradata. Most of these businesses have not been replaced and their factories are lying empty. Over a year ago, when Tayto closed its famous north side factory with a loss of 98 jobs, I raised the issue of the failure of the IDA to attract jobs to the north side and urged Sean Dorgan urgently to change the IDA policy of directing jobs away from Dublin's north side. There is a need for less skilled jobs to be aimed at areas of high unemployment. So far that message does not seem to have got through to either Mr. Dorgan or the Fianna Fáil Party and the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government.

The disgraceful rise in energy costs of well over 100% in gas prices for example and 60% to 70% in electricity during the lifetime of this Government has put a significant strain on business. The organisation for small and medium enterprises, ISME, describes the rising cost of energy as the "number one enemy" for business in this country. The Irish Exporters Association referred to "the unacceptably high increases in the cost of energy supply" which the Government needs to address urgently. IBEC has stated that perhaps 120 companies with over 52,000 workers are directly in danger of major pressures and downsizing, or even closure and liquidation, due to escalating energy costs.

Yesterday was a sad and regrettable day for Coolock and for the whole northside region. It is time for the Taoiseach and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Martin, to come forward with a strategy for our region to address competitiveness and energy costs and to implement it quickly. The organisations to which I referred earlier, in particular Northside Partnership, its chief executive officer, Ms Marion Vickers and chairperson, Mr. Willie Hamilton and their staff, the Northside Centre for the Unemployed and Coolock Development Council will be willing to liaise closely with Cadbury's management in respect of any retraining and reinstatement of workers affected by this restructuring programme. I urge the Government and Government Deputies to give the strongest possible financial and other assistance to the local organisations to enable them to do so.

See this speech in context