Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)

The job losses in Cork represent a quarter of the Pfizer jobs force in the county. Our first thoughts must be with the workers who are displaced. It is incumbent on us and on the Government in particular to ensure those workers get the best possible deal. They are going out into one of the worst labour markets in the history of the country. It will be very difficult for those generally well paid workers to gain alternative employment, especially in this country.

The fact Pfizer has decided to reduce its workforce in Cork by one quarter is pretty ominous for a number of reasons. First, I am very familiar with the Pfizer company because it has a major plant in my constituency which has been one of the mainstays of employment in the mid-west for decades. It is a very progressive company that usually does not let people go, and its pay and conditions are among the best in the industry in Ireland. Second, most of the jobs going in Cork are high-end jobs, involving highly educated and skilled people. This is not the traditional fall-out where some manufacturing company moves to a cheaper jurisdiction, as happened with part of the Dell plant in Limerick. Third, the job losses in Cork are inextricably linked with the fact that the patent on Lipitor has expired. The Minister will be aware this phenomenon will have a devastating impact on employment in the pharmaceutical industry in Ireland, which employs more than 25,000 people in well-paid jobs. This is the start of a trend as quite a number of patents are due to expire which will have a devastating impact on employment in the pharmaceutical industry.

The Minister will also be aware of newspaper reports on the decision of Atlantic Homecare to apply for examinership. The company has made a proposal to the High Court involving a restructuring which will lead to the loss of a certain number of jobs. We all hope the application to the High Court will be successful, an accommodation with creditors will be reached, and the job losses will stop at what has been announced. However, I thought it was very significant that in the explanation of its decision, the company emphasised the fact it was caught by unavailability of legislation to deal with upward-only rent reviews that had been historically agreed.

In the recent general election, the current Government parties faithfully promised that upward-only rent reviews, be they present, past or future, would be legislated out of existence. They said they had legal advice to this effect. Since the election, some of the victims of upward-only rent reviews have got legal advice of their own which is very compelling. I would love to see the Government's legal advice and I would particularly like to see the advice the Labour Party claimed it had available before the election.

Atlantic Homecare joins a long list of companies - Xtra-vision, Golden Discs and Arnotts, to name but a few - that have thrown people out of the workforce and onto the industrial scrapheap because they were unable to renegotiate upward-only rent review clauses that had been agreed before the recent legislation that banned such rent from that date. Has the Government been considering the impact on employment of the lack of a remedy for upward-only rent reviews? Has it any proposals to deal with the situation?

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