Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many of us have brought up the infrastructural deficits we are talking about here, namely housing, Uisce Éireann, the electricity grid and communications. The recent Storm Éowyn showed serious pressures and the need to deal with this. Housing is just a crisis that has, in no way, improved for those who are impacted.

We also know we are under severe pressure in respect of Donald Trump and tariffs. While we need to have cool heads, we do not exactly know how this will go. I want to give some details of a constituent with a business in the medical devices sector and the impacts tariffs are already having, although I will not name the company. The business is a provider of specialist precision manufacturing in the medical devices industry. It describes itself as a world-class operation competing at the highest level with companies across the globe. As it works on a global level, it is heavily reliant on international customer and supply chains. It has described losing a number of orders from US customers and is afraid of further knock-on. This is a grave risk to employment at the company. The main concern with the impact on employment is that its staff are highly trained and it has taken the company many years and significant investment to bring them to that level. If they are lost, regaining that expertise will be near impossible. The company is asking for immediate measures to be put in place by the Government to support staff who are put at risk due to the imposition of tariffs by the US Administration.

The urgency of the matter cannot be overstressed. Cancellation of orders by the company's customers has already been decided and implemented. It is afraid of what is to come and is sure this is happening to many other companies. While we do not know exactly where this will go, we know it will have to end in an engagement with the American Administration. As was done in Covid, we need to make sure we maintain companies like this, which have a really good business model and have done a significant amount of vital work in the past. We must ensure that the company and its workers have a future.

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