Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 299: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his plans to visit a company (details supplied) in County Cork. [1928/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The dispute at the Vita Cortex factory in Cork involves 32 workers who have been engaged in a sit-in at the factory since 16 December last arising from a dispute with their employer over redundancy payments.

The workers are seeking severance terms of 2.9 weeks' pay per year of service, inclusive of statutory redundancy, in line with previous redundancy deals at the company.

In the interest of achieving a resolution in this dispute, I urged both parties to avail of the State's industrial relations machinery as soon as possible with a view to exploring ways of resolving the issues in dispute. Officials from my Department were in contact with the worker's union representatives in efforts to clarify the issues involved and to make them aware that the industrial relations machinery of the State is available to them to help them resolve the dispute.

In this context, the Labour Relations Commission invited both parties to meet in Cork on Tuesday 17 January to clarify the facts of the situation and, against that background, to explore with the parties the potential for moving forward. The meeting adjourned and reconvened on Friday last, 20 January.

Regretfully, those talks adjourned on Friday night with no plans to reconvene. According to the LRC, they had been unable to find a basis for agreement between the parties involved.

The absence of an agreement on the payment of extra statutory severance terms for the workers is without prejudice to the arrangements being made by the Department of Social Protection to process the applications made for payment of statutory redundancy to the workers concerned.

The LRC has confirmed that they will maintain contact with both parties and that if an opportunity should arise for the Commission to be of further assistance in moving the situation forward, it is ready to get involved.