High-skills fears as 500 jobs lost in 24 hours

CALLS were made last night for greater Government efforts to protect high-skilled jobs after another 500 job losses were announced in a 24-hour period.

The most significant of the three major announcements was in Waterford, where the Sanofi-Aventis plant is to shut down later this year, after almost four decades of employment in the city.

The 200 staff were told yesterday morning that the world’s third-largest pharmaceutical firm is moving the manufacture of creams and ointments from the plant, most likely to its facilities in France or Germany, which have spare production capacity.