Mayor critical of lack of employment supports

THE Government’s failure to introduce employment supports was a major factor behind a major loss of employment in the Shannon Free Zone last year, according to the town’s mayor, Tony Mulcahy.

According to the annual report, the numbers working at the Free Zone went from 7,107 in 2008 to 6,320 last year, a drop of almost 800, or 11%.
Commenting on the figures, Councillor Mulcahy, who served as Mayor of Clare for the first half of 2009, said he wasn’t at all surprised to hear about the fall in numbers employed.
“It’s one of those things that you don’t need to see in a report, it’s obvious on the ground here.”
He said that the scale of the local job losses might still be underestimated.
“I would estimate that around 3,000 jobs have been lost over the last three years although a few have been created, which mightn’t make the overall loss of jobs look as bad. In the main, it has been manufacturing jobs that are going and the problem is that there is literally nothing being done by the Government to address it.”
Councillor Mulcahy, who stood for Fine Gael in the 2007 General Election, said that supports to protect employment weren’t delivered.
“The 2008 budget promised a jobs subsidy programme worth €1 billion but by the time the Finance Bill came around, that figure had been reduced to €250 million and that was only for export companies. Quite a few of the companies here aren’t exporting.”
He claimed that the Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan and the then Minister for Enterprise, Mary Coughlan had been asleep at the wheel.
“Companies were not able to get supports to keep people employed. Mary Coughlan and Brian Lenihan had taken their eyes off the ball in 2008 and 2009 and it led to massive job losses. Jobs that could have been sustained are gone. If €100 had been given to businesses per employee for 18 months, it might have preserved jobs but on social welfare they will claim far in excess of €100 a week.”
Councillor Mulcahy also said that he would favour having a single economic development agency for the region and said that there is duplication between Shannon Development, Enterprise Ireland and the IDA.
However, he is hopeful that a corner has been turned in relation to the economy, although things still aren’t very positive.
“There seems to have been a small bit of an upturn on the ground but it’s not nearly enough to get back the jobs that were there. It’s not up to the level that it needs to be,” he concluded.