Job creation focus on Dungarvan promised

STATE agencies will focus on job creation in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, Transport Minister Martin Cullen has vowed.

Negotiations between unions and management at Waterford Crystal continue as the company bids to shed 485 jobs and close its Dungarvan operation from the end of the summer.

Now Mr Cullen says that the area is not being ignored and that decentralisation is pressing ahead at speed in the region.

“I don’t underestimate the impact that this is having in Dungarvan at an individual level for those who have lost their jobs there as well as to the economy,” said Mr Cullen.

“There is no doubt that we have to refocus on the area. The county manager made an excellent presentation recently to the Minister for Trade and Employment. We need now to focus on bringing new jobs to Dungarvan.

“Dungarvan has turned around so much in the past years that any company that will come and see Dungarvan won’t have any issue about locating there. The connectivity of the region is great, the infrastructure is improving and we will have a motorway to Dublin by 2010.

“The connectivity of Waterford as the central hub and capital of the south east will be central to that,” he added.

He said the decentralisation of the Ordinance

Survey department to

Dungarvan will be a major boost, but not the solution to everything for the region. He said a site has been identified and a price agreed.

“It’s a good step forward. There is a general issue about staff not wanting to move. But Ordinance Survey Ireland is in a situation where it needs new premises. Dungarvan is what the State policy has decided and the Minister for Finance is very committed to the project,” Mr Cullen said.

An inter-agency forum has been set up locally in Dungarvan to help plan for the end of the summer, when the job cuts have been proposed.

It features experts from the county council, the VEC, FÁS, IDA Ireland, LEADER and others.

Employment Minister Micheál Martin has asked the group to make proposals and he will then examine if extra funding for the county enterprise board would also help those who lose jobs at Waterford Crystal set up their own enterprises.