Uncertainty over €14m package for Dell workers

FORMER workers at the Dell plant in Limerick may have to wait until Christmas for the €14.8 million stimulus package from the European Union.

MEPs in the European Parliament have questioned the package and claimed they should have been consulted before the aid package was announced in Limerick in the run-up to the Lisbon Referendum.

All spending has to be approved by both the parliament and the council representing the member states.

Labour MEP Alan Kelly said he is lobbying his fellow members in the European Parliament to approve the money as quickly as possible.

All EU spending has to be approved by the parliament and its budgets committee before it can be paid out. They have asked the commission about Dell’s new plant in Poland where some of the Limerick jobs were transferred.

They want to know why the commission approved Polish state aid to this plant and why Dell could not provide better for the Irish workers they were laying off. “We are expecting to get the answers soon,” said a spokesperson for the committee.

They will vote on the matter at their next meeting on November 3/4.

However, they must wait for an opinion on the package from the Employment Committee that is not due to meet until two days later on November 5 and 6.

So the report will not be ready for the parliament to vote on at their plenary session on November 23 and will have to wait for the December session.

The Employment Committee has questioned whether the European Commission properly processed the package before President Jose Manuel Barroso announced it on a pre-referendum visit to Limerick in September.

A spokesperson for the commission said that Mr Barroso was entitled to announce that the commission had approved the money from the Globalisation Fund.

She said there was some confusion over the issue of state aid for the Polish Dell plant. “This is money from the Polish government and if their application complies with the rules we have no option but to approve it,” she said.

Mr Kelly said he had lobbied his fellow MEPs not to delay the funding that is going to help 2,000 Dell workers and 840 others from eight suppliers and downstream producers.

He told the parliament, “It is with extreme urgency that I call on this parliament to see that the €14.8m promised to the workers of the mid-west in Limerick, Kerry and Tipperary who worked for Dell, Banta and their suppliers is allocated as soon as possible.

“Members of this house should not delay the provision of that money in any way. Workers have made plans with the promised €6,000 per worker todevelop their own businesses or go back to further education.

“At one stage Dell and its suppliers employed one in every five people in the mid-west, so this area has been hit hard and the region needs this economic stimulus,” he said.

Mr Kelly wants the commission to include the region as an area of serious unemployment when it is reviewing the State Aid Rules next year, so it can qualify for further funding.