Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)

I would like to use my time in this House to best serve the people of Waterford who have been neglected for a decade in terms of industrial investment in the city and the region. Along with my fellow Waterford Deputies, I have the dubious honour of being the first person to use this new Topical Issues Debate. I use the word "dubious" because the news in Waterford over the past few weeks has been appalling. Some 575 people have lost their jobs in Talk Talk in Waterford in the past week and that is the critical issue up for debate this afternoon. Ironically, a company whose job it is to deal in telecommunications proved to do a spectacularly bad job at communicating this bad news to the Government and its workers.

Earlier this year we had more bad news in Waterford. GlaxoSmithKline, based in Dungarvan, is to lose 130 of its workers. In September 2009, Teva, the largest pharmaceutical company in the south east, let go 315 workers. Almost 500 jobs went in Waterford Crystal when the company went into receivership in 2009. The glass, as it is known locally, made the Waterford name a proud one and an international byword for quality and elegance and it employed almost 3,000 workers at its peak. Bausch & Lomb, an eye care company, announced 195 lay-offs in March 2009; I could go on.

Waterford has become an unemployment blackspot. Currently, more than 15,000 people are on the live register in Waterford; 2,500 of these are in the city alone. That is just not good enough and I intend to use my time in this House to fight for the people of Waterford and the south-east region. This crisis must be tackled. What will be done to tackle this jobs crisis Waterford currently faces?

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