Minister urged to force NAMA pay out redundancies
Forty workers at the Vita Cortex plant in Cork are set to join dole queues when the foam manufacturing factory shuts.
But they are being deprived of redundancy payments because state-run NAMA has frozen bank accounts linked to their employer.
The issue came to a head yesterday when AIB, acting on NAMA’s instructions, wrote to the company saying it will not release money from an account SIPTU says should be used to pay the workers a €1.2 million redundancy package.
A spokesman for NAMA said the agency empathised with the workers. But he said the cash deposit over which it has control and which is being targeted by SIPTU, is security against a different loan owed to NAMA by a different company.
“This loan is owed to the taxpayer and NAMA will be seeking to recover this loan to reduce the debt to the taxpayer,” he said.
“The redundancy issue should be dealt with by SIPTU and Vita Cortex.”
However, SIPTU official Anne Eager said she believes the account is linked to the owners of the Vita Cortex company and that ordinary workers, who are not to blame for the company’s closure, are caught in the middle.
“Our members are now in a horrendous situation facing Christmas with the prospect of no jobs and no redundancy payments.”
Vita Cortex is owned by Jack Ronan who secured a €10m loan from AIB to buy the company from its previous shareholders using the Cork plant as collateral.
But the company announced in September that it was closing the plant after the operation’s assets were frozen by NAMA.
Labour TD Ciarán Lynch raised the issue in the Dáil yesterday and backed calls for the Finance Minister to intervene.
“This situation is intolerable. It seems that members of the workforce are being used as pawns in some kind of game in which NAMA seems to be the main player,” he said.
But Junior Minister Ciarán Cannon, speaking for the Finance Minister, said it was not a NAMA debtor and was not controlled by the agency.
“The money referred to in media reports represents part security that NAMA has for a loan in respect of other companies, which are NAMA debtors.”
Mr Lynch said the money was in a “financial merry-go-round” between NAMA and the employer’s different companies.
