Dell workers to get €9k grants for retraining
A special committee has been formed that includes Fás, the Enterprise Boards, third-level colleges and representatives of the Dell and Banta workers to oversee the process.
Labour MEP Alan Kelly, who has been advising the Dell workers, said that between €8,500 and €9,000 would be available to each worker and that opportunities had to be identified quickly to ensure best value can be got from the money.
The pay-out of the €14.8 million from the EU’s globalisation fund has been delayed but Mr Kelly said he expects it will be available before Christmas.
The workers and other interested bodies met the Department of Employment recently to discuss what needed to be done.
Mr Kelly said that they had agreed to include other colleges such as the Institute of Technology in Tralee in addition to University College Limerick.
Some of the workers were very low skilled and would need more basic retraining than others so it was essential to include crafts, he said.
There were also other issues to be resolved such as how to ensure best value was got for the money given the two-year deadline. “We need to find out if we can commit it to a four-year training course in advance for instance”, said the Tipperary MEP.
Payment of the money based on 2,840 redundancies has been delayed as the European Parliament’s Employment Committee is questioning why the European Commission allowed the Polish government to give state aid to the Dell plant that purportedly took over the manufacturing from the Limerick plant. However according to the information given to the commission by the Irish Government, the jobs were lost not to Poland but to China.
The total retraining package for the workers from Dell and eight of its suppliers was estimated by the government at almost €23m of which the European Commission agreed to provide €14.8m.
