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

This is becoming a bit of a habit. Two weeks ago I unfortunately tabled a Topical Issue to deal with hundreds of job losses in the aircraft aviation maintenance sector and now 1,000 jobs in the pharmaceutical sector are on the line. Some 570 of those jobs are in Swords in my constituency. I know that plant well. It is an operation that has been in existence for well over ten years. It provides decent employment. If one was to read its website today one would think matters are great. It lauds the fact of recent investment in the plant, how the site was selected to manufacture a range of new products which were due to be launched in the next few years. It also lauds the fact that it has made a lot of recent investment in the accommodation in that area.

The announcement of the loss of 570 jobs in Swords in MSD Pharmaceuticals comes just after the announcement of the loss of 280 jobs by the same company in its plant in Wicklow that produces one of the active ingredients of its products. In essence, the second biggest pharmaceutical company in the world is axing its workforce in Ireland by one third. It claims that it has 9,000 indirect jobs based on these jobs, therefore, presumably we can say that another 3,000 jobs are also on the line. That is an almighty blow which undermines much of the great talk from the Government.

I have a few specific questions for the Minister of State. When the announcements were made about job losses in MSD, the IDA chief executive was unfortunate enough to say that we should not worry about this, that the organisation has a great track record in finding alternative buyers. He said it has facilitated the purchase of the site of MSD from global pharma companies such as Pfizer and Wyeth. Then a few days later Pfizer announced its job losses. Can the Minister of State tell us how many supports and grants have been given by the IDA to these industries? Are there problems in the pension funds in that plant? What meetings arranged by the IDA or other Government organisations have taken place with the employer and the unions? Have the Minister or his agencies given any attention to the idea of the plant continuing to operate as a going concern?

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