Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support the Order of Business as read out by the Leader. There are a number of points that I wish to raise.

The Kerry Group, as we know, is a company that prides itself on its Irish heritage, from its modest beginnings as a dairy co-operative in Kerry to how it has always stayed close to our food heritage and to its roots. The Kerry Group has also benefited significantly from project support from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment through Enterprise Ireland. We were all very excited a number of years ago when we heard the Kerry Group was coming to Millennium Park in Naas, County Kildare. At the opening of that particular facility the chief executive spoke about the tremendous support the Kerry Group had received from the Irish Government, from State agencies and from Kildare County Council, of which I was a member at that time, and that the centre would support functional and business leadership development and scalable sustainable growth right into the future.

I was absolutely shocked last week to see that 150 jobs were going to go from the group in Naas and another dozen jobs were to go in Charleville in Cork.The reason redundancy is being offered is that Kerry Group has decided to farm the jobs out to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. One of the workers impacted by the job losses contacted me to say that exactly the same jobs will be advertised and people hired over the coming weeks, that there is a schedule of transition in respect of all the existing employees sharing their knowledge and expertise and that exit dates will start on 1 October. This particular company posted profits of €800 million in 2020. This is pure corporate greed. The Seanad should call on the Minister with responsibility for business and jobs to contact Kerry Group to ensure that negotiations take place on retaining these jobs, if possible, and that no other jobs leave Ireland. What is happening is a disgrace.

I welcome the White Paper on the ending of direct provision. This is a significant development which complies with the commitment in the programme for Government on ending direct provision. Coincidentally, I submitted a Commencement matter for today, which was not chosen, on ensuring that asylum seekers and immigrants working in the health service have an opportunity to have their citizenship applications fast-tracked. To give a brief example, last week, a lady in direct provision who is a front-line healthcare worker has to get two buses to work because she cannot get a driving licence as she is in direct provision.