State agencies will offer priority assistance to the 360 workers who are to lose their jobs with the closure of the Allergan plant in Co Wicklow, Minister for Enterprise Micheál Martin promised yesterday.
The company announced yesterday that its manufacturing plant in Arklow, which produces breast implants for the global market, will be closed on a phased basis over the next two years.
It said that it is to consolidate the manufacturing of its breast implant products at a new facility in Costa Rica.
The company is to meet the IDA today to brief it on its plans and to discuss issues such as the repayments of grants and the future of the site, which is leased in part from the development authority.
It is understood that Allergan will repay over €3 million that it received in IDA grants.
The general manager of the Allergan plant, Paul Moody, said the decision to close the facility had been taken earlier this week by the board of the company in the United States for economic and operational reasons.
A comprehensive review undertaken by the company had found that significant investment would be needed in the Arklow facility, he said.
This, in addition to relatively higher labour and energy costs and the savings generated from streamlining manufacturing in one plant, had made it inevitable that the company would seek to concentrate on its facility in Costa Rica, he added. Mr Moody said Allergan would now enter into talks with Siptu and staff representatives on the phased closure of the facility and on the redundancy packages to be provided.
Allergan's executive vice-president for global technical operations, Raymond Diradoorian, said that the plant in Costa Rica, which was built in 2006, had the capacity to meet current and future production needs to the highest quality specifications.
"This decision has been carefully deliberated and while difficult, has been made necessary by the high level of investment required to maintain competitiveness at the Arklow manufacturing location," he said.
The company said yesterday that there was no threat to its operations in Westport and Dublin, which employ over 800 staff.
Mr Martin said Allergan's decision to close its Arklow facility was "very disappointing".
He said the workers and their families were a top priority for the Government and its job creation and training agencies.
"Enterprise Ireland and Fás will work with the employees to ensure that replacement jobs are found for the workers.
"Training and other supports will be on offer, including information on small business start-ups. IDA Ireland will continue to work to attract new investment into the region," the Minister said.
However, Siptu president Jack O'Connor said the impending loss of 360 jobs in Arklow was only the latest in a series of large-scale redundancies in the manufacturing sector and that the time was long past for the Government to put in place an ambitious programme for upskilling workers, particularly in this sector.
"Many Siptu members in Allergan today must be deeply concerned about what the future holds and we will be doing everything we can to help them," he said
"But the key player here is the Government, not alone in relation to Arklow but the country at large. It has been slow to react to the growing threat to the manufacturing sector in terms of retraining."
Mr O'Connor said that even "the relatively modest proposal" in the national agreement Towards 2016 to reduce fees for workers attending third-level courses on a part-time basis had yet to be delivered. He said that the issue of retraining for workers would be a key priority for Siptu in the forthcoming new national pay talks.
Fine Gael spokesman on enterprise Leo Varadkar said the 350 staff being laid off at Allergan needed full assistance from the company and State agencies in retraining and finding alternative employment and that this policy should also be replicated across the country.