‘They didn’t look for this company to survive’

DEVASTATED Irish Sugar workers maintained last night that the doomed Mallow factory had a future.

Most factory workers declined to comment publicly as they left the Mallow plant just after their shift ended at 4.15pm yesterday.

But the dedicated staff, who went back to work after management broke the news in the factory canteen at 2.30pm, said there was at least one more campaign left in the plant.

The decision to shut the plant was a complete shock.

“This came as a bolt out of the blue,” SIPTU official and worker director Liam Lucey said. He blamed Agriculture Minister Mary Coughlan and ex-IFA president John Dillon for the closure. He said they entered talks in Brussels looking for compensation not reform of the industry.

“They didn’t look for this company to survive, they just looked for a pot of gold,” Mr Lucey said. “This industry had a future. We processed the entire Irish sugar quota last year with 50 workers less that the previous year. We are the only EU country giving up our sugar industry.

“Why did Mary Coughlan take that stand, shoving a knife into the industry?”

Mr Lucey said the closure of Irish Sugar will have far reaching implications for Ireland’s industrial network. The factory supplies sugar to global giants like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Showerings, Diageo, Ferrero, Wyeths baby food producers in Askeaton, Co Limerick.

Sean O’Donoghue, 53, who has worked with the company for the last 34 years, has never worked anywhere else, was devastated. “We considered ourselves a good workforce and we helped the company in every way we could. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll just have to wait and see, but I’ve nothing lined up.”

The distribution of 50,000 tonnes of processed sugar stored at Mallow’s two giant silos will continue over the coming months until the May 12 closure.

Redundancy talks are expected to start within days.