Place not your trust in multinationals

THE Government must move to bring some semblance of justice into the marketplace where big industries set up after receiving a golden handshake from the IDA and other state agencies only to stay here for a few years before locking the factory gate, leaving workers on the scrapheap with, in some cases, little compensation to keep home and family.

This type of industrial relationship must stop sooner rather than later.

We have workers who have given 30-to-40 years service before being made redundant or offered alternative employment – usually menial, poorly-paid work inadequate to maintain family and home.

Taxpayers’ money given to the private sector that has failed this country is wasted.

What Ireland needs is not more direction from the top but less official interference, fewer demands and fewer restrictions. We have a great country if the people who are concerned with production, management and staff were allowed get on with it. But the superstructure dominating from the top has proved deadly. That must be changed.

Multinationals have no compunction in moving manufacturing from one country to another. The one common requirement is a fixed standard of quality. After that it is a matter of deciding which factory can produce and deliver goods at the lowest price.

There is a lesson here for management and the workforce in every factory in the country to join together to ensure that unit costs are kept to a minimum.

The Government has the opportunity in the budget to show how serious it is about job creation and fostering an enterprise culture. It must recognise that tackling unemployment is now the nation’s number one priority. By their deeds shall we judge them.

Cllr Noel Collins

‘St Jude’s’

Midleton

Co Cork