Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

There is a certain irony in the fact that the Minister with responsibility for jobs is in India trying to scrape up a few jobs for us while in the background hundreds of highly skilled and important aviation maintenance jobs are on the line. We must view this against the backdrop of the loss of 1,000 such jobs in SRT. Ireland was a world leader in aviation maintenance. If these two companies are allowed to fold, we will lose that skill, on top of what already happened in north County Dublin. The loss of these jobs would be a body blow. We need only look at what happened to the workers in SRT. Many of them have not got jobs since, and that is the future that faces people in Lufthansa Technik and Pratt & Whitney, unless the Government steps in now.

There are a number of issues we must consider. Both operations have been in existence for decades. Pratt & Whitney is highly profitable, its order books are full and its pension scheme is in top class order. However, that company is now collateral damage in the parent company's dealings with Singapore Airlines. More than 75% of Pratt & Whitney's customers come from outside of the company. This is a viable business. Over decades, the workers have delivered first to market ground-breaking aircraft maintenance and engine casing works which have become an industry norm internationally. We cannot allow that to go. These companies have done very well out of the IDA. The Pratt & Whitney site was donated for a song decades ago. The company has even managed to make quite a lot of money from selling off parcels of that land in the past.

Workers have put forward a number of propositions to management, in terms of the idea of diversifying and taking in some extra work from the parent company. They have also proposed that Pratt & Whitney should consider the sale of the operation as a going concern. I want the Minister of State to assure us that the Department is fully involved in these discussions and that the State will step in if necessary. The issues are too important not to do so. The financial reports speak for themselves. These are highly viable industries.

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