Ireland ‘too costly’ as 785 jobs to go

AS almost 800 of Ireland’s 5,000 Pfizer employees contemplate being forced on to the dole queue, the company’s head of Irish operations has warned Ireland cannot continue to be the most expensive environment in which the pharmaceutical company is operating.

The company yesterday announced it was reducing its global workforce by 6,000, or 18%, of which up to 785 will come from the closure of two plants in Cork, one in Dún Laoghaire and the downsizing of its operation in Newbridge.

The pharmaceutical company’s decision to make the jobs purge is mainly due to its $68 billion acquisition of former rival Wyeth last October.

That deal meant it had a number of plants operating around the world offering duplicate services.

Dr Paul Duffy, who leads the company’s operations in Ireland, said the global review entailed deciding which ones it should retain. The criteria included the cost of the plants and the capital required to keep them running.

Mr Duffy said the cost to business of operating here had got “out of whack” and “out of hand” and Ireland ended up living on the back of the Celtic Tiger.

“We are starting to pull those back but we are still one of the more costly environments that Pfizer would have around the world,” he said. “We need to continue to focus on that.”

However he said Ireland still had a lot to offer. “It is not just purely cost, it’s reliability, the skills of the people and I would put our people up against any Pfizer people around the world,” he said.

On that note he said plans were afoot to expand one of Pfizer’s other operations, Grange Castle in Dublin, in the future and that there was also the potential for new products at Newbridge.

While the Government came under criticism from opposition TDs in the Dáil yesterday for not doing enough to keep the jobs here in Ireland, Mr Duffy indicated there was little that could have been done to prevent the withdrawals.

“We have had a fair amount of interaction with the Government,” he said. “(Taoiseach) Brian Cowen has met with our CEO Jeff Kindler, Mary Coughlan, in her time, was in to see our head of manufacturing Nat Ricciardi and Brian Lenihan has met our head of finance Frank D’Amelio and (IDA chief) Barry O’Leary has met our people in New York on numerous occasions over the last six months,” Mr Duffy said.

“So there has been a lot of ongoing Government interaction with Pfizer executives in the US,” he said.

“But the reality is that there is not much a local government can do when you do a global study like this. You take decisions that affect the company at a broader level.”

The IDA has now started looking for potential buyers for the three plants, Shanbally and Loughbeg in Cork and its manufacturing plant in Dún Laoghaire.

Pfizer intends to start vacating those plants in the next 18 months.