Exchequer may get €24m from firm closures
The Exchequer Returns published this week shows receipts of €12 million from IDA refunded grants up to September which is the amount budgeted for the entire year.
However, internal IDA figures show that €36 million has been paid back to the State jobs creation agency this year by IDA-supported companies who closed or failed to meet job targets.
In 2001, the IDA received €16.8 million in grant repayments but just €7.7 million of this was returned to Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, according to the most recent exchequer returns.
However, as IDA job approvals have slowed this year it is expected that the bulk of the €36 million returned to the IDA will make its way back to the exchequer.
An IDA spokesman said there were no difficulties in having grants repaid by overseas companies. He said the only outstanding problem arose out of a factory closure in Tralee.
The IDA has entered into litigation in the Canadian courts against Klopman International Ltd, with registered offices at Clash Industrial Estate, Tralee, Co Kerry, and its Canadian parent, Dominion Textile Inc, of Montreal, Quebec.
The IDA claim they are owed €2,126,762 arising out of an agreement with the State agencies dating back to January 1994.
Klopman, which once employed 1,000 people in Tralee, closed in 1977 and the company an its Canadian parent are refusing to pay back the grants paid to them. Gateway, which closed its Clonshaugh plant in Dublin in August of last year with the loss of 900 jobs and hundreds of support jobs, paid back €11.140 million to the IDA. This was the single biggest payment by an IDA supported company this year.
General Semiconductor, who announced in April of last year that it was to close its factory in Macroom, County Cork with the loss of 670 jobs, paid back €9.2 million to the IDA.
The company’s plant was subsequently bought by pharmaceutical company Elan, who intended to open a production facility in the vacant plant. However, major reversals in Elan’s fortunes and a subsequent asset sell-off by the Athlone-based company means that the GS plant in Macroom is back on the market.
US company Xerox paid back grants totalling €9.2 million to September of this year.
Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics (MKE) paid the state job creation agency back €1.7 million in May of this year arising from the closure in February of the MKIR Panasonic plant in Dundalk, Co Louth, with the loss of 360 jobs. It is not known if this transaction completes the full repayment of grants by MKE to the IDA.
