Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I thank the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment for her reply which strongly suggests she is throwing in the towel on the survival of an operating facility in Dublin for anything more than one quarter of the current workforce at SR Technics. She seems to accept as a reality that SR Technics can asset-strip key equipment from the Dublin facility, thus disabling SR Technics Dublin's potential to restart operations and thereby compete with the revamped SR Technics operation in Geneva. Is she throwing in the towel and saying all that is salvageable are 250 of the line maintenance jobs because of the nature of these jobs and the maintenance of aircraft on the ground in the vicinity of Dublin Airport which is the home of the Aer Lingus fleet? The stripping of critical equipment is like the action of someone in a colony who when the country gains independence ups sticks and takes equipment with the result that the highly qualified, crème de la crème of industrial employees left behind are prevented from exercising their skills.

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