Terenure Printers closing with loss of 163 jobs

The printing operation of the Sunday World has announced it will close at the end of July with the loss of 163 jobs.

Terenure Printers blamed the loss of several key printing contracts and growing competition from more modern printing plants around the country for the decision.

The board of the Independent News & Media subsidiary plans to sell the site of roughly one acre to fund redundancy arrangements.

Property industry sources said it could expect to fetch more than €10 million.

Staff were summoned to a general meeting at the works yesterday afternoon at which managing director Michael Brophy said the decision to close the plant was "unavoidable and irrevocable".

"The major factors in the decision include the serious financial impact of key contract losses - as a result of the plant's uncompetitive cost base and staffing level - and increased capacity and competition in print contracting in Ireland," the company said in a statement.

The company recently lost contracts to print the Farmer's Journal, Buy & Sell and Express Newspapers titles.

"Recent efforts to recover the Express Newspapers' contract and a contract to print Buy & Sell have proven unsuccessful," the company said.

It remains unclear where the Sunday World, Sunday Tribune and Irish Star will be printed from August.

Terenure Printers, which employs 115 permanent and 48 casual staff, has offered six weeks redundancy pay for each year of service, inclusive of statutory entitlements.

Staff will receive a minimum of one year's pay with no upper limit.

Some of the staff have been with the company for more than 30 years.

In a meeting with union representatives after the news was delivered, staff overwhelmingly voted to look for better redundancy arrangements rather than battle to save the struggling operation.

The Dublin Printing Group of Unions said in a statement last night: "While not closing off any options at present, it does appear at this stage that there is very little prospect of saving any part of the operation."

However, it said the €10 million package outlined by the company had been rejected and the unions would meet company executives on Monday to negotiate severance terms.

The Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) condemned the closure as a "race to the bottom that sees highly profitable companies destroy jobs to maximise profits, regardless of the human cost".

Regional secretary Arthur Hall accused Independent News & Media, which owns Terenure Printing, of being intent on moving the work to its Belfast Telegraph subsidiary "where pay and conditions are poorer".

"It is a classic asset stripping operation, the only difference being that in this case an Irish-owned multinational company," he said.