MINISTER FOR Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton yesterday announced that he had directed IDA Ireland and other agencies to draw up a jobs action plan for the southeast as UK telecoms firm TalkTalk refused to defer its plan to close its Waterford call centre next month with the loss of 575 jobs.
Mr Bruton travelled to Waterford yesterday where he met both management and employee representatives at TalkTalk but he was unable to persuade the company to row back on its plan to close within 30 days to allow IDA Ireland a better opportunity to find a replacement industry.
Mr Bruton supported a call by TalkTalk employee representatives for the company to offer the same seven weeks per year of service redundancy package given to 50 staff in 2010 rather than the four weeks per year of service package which the company is offering the 575 employees set to lose their jobs next month.
Employee representative Tom Phelan also called on the Government to make it a statutory requirement for any company to give 90 days’ notice – as is the case in the UK – rather than the 30 days on the statute to give a better chance both to workers to find alternative jobs and State agencies to find replacement industries.
Mr Bruton said it was regrettable that TalkTalk had not agreed to an extension but the Government had to accept this and that was why he had directed IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, local enterprise boards and other support agencies to prepare an action plan within the next month.
The number of job losses in Waterford in recent years including the imminent closure of TalkTalk meant that the area was a priority for the Government in terms of seeking new investment.
The southeast action plan would help identify why Waterford had failed to attract as much inward investment as other areas, he said.
IDA Ireland chief executive Barry O’Leary said that the agency had secured agreement with TalkTalk to retain a handful of staff to maintain the site at the IDA Ireland Industrial Estate on the Cork Road as a call centre until January to facilitate the IDA in trying to sell it as a suitable site for any new call centre business.
He said that the agency had already had a number of site visits earlier this year from investors seeking to set up an English-speaking call centre operation in Waterford and those discussions were continuing but TalkTalk’s insistence on closing the site within 30 days made it difficult for the agency to secure a new operator so quickly.
Both Mr Bruton and Mr O’Leary defended IDA Ireland’s record in the southeast in recent years but local Fine Gael TD John Deasy said the southeast action plan proposed by Mr Bruton would amount to nothing unless it addressed problems with the IDA’s operation in Waterford and the status of Waterford Institute of Technology.
Mr Deasy said he had met seven of the top companies in Waterford recently and all were critical of the support received from IDA Ireland which had downgraded its Waterford office 10 years ago.
While Mr Bruton played down the importance of granting WIT university status, Mr Deasy said he believed there was opposition to the move at Cabinet level.