Give third-level places to redundant workers, Labour senator urges

VACANT third-level places should be filled by factory workers who are being made redundant in Donegal and Louth, it was claimed yesterday.

The closure of American pharmaceutical firm Hospira will leave 560 people without work in Donegal town and 250 will be made redundant at the Quantum Corporation electronics factory in Dundalk.

Labour Senator Joanna Tuffy said the workers should be offered the vacant course places in their local colleges, Letterkenny Institute of Technology and Dundalk Institute of Technology.

“They have hundreds of vacant places and even though they’re on the Central Applications Office (CAO), they’re not going to fill all of them. I am now calling on the two institutes to make an imaginative response to the manufacturing jobs crisis in their regions,” she said.

The Dublin Mid West senator said she had written to the ITs urging them to get the Hospira and Quantum workers to take up the college places as part-time students.

According to the CAO, LIT has vacancies in 14 courses, including business studies, legal studies, quantity surveying and computing. DIT has vacancies in12 courses including food science, public relations and engineering.

Ms Tuffy, who previously worked a college registrar with Dublin Institute of Technology, said she believed it would be realistic for workers to take up the places.

“It’s worth a try. The people can go in and take the same courses as other students, just with less hours and they can build up credits gradually.”