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Tánaiste gets Loom funding flak
23.09.09
Coughlan criticised
over lack of EU funding for Fruit of the Loom
workers
by Simon McGeady, Inishowen
Independent
A BUNCRANA councillor has blasted as ‘disgraceful’
the failure of the Government to access the European
Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) to assist Fruit
of the Loom workers who lost their jobs in Donegal. |
Cllr Padraig
MacLochlainn’s comments came after the President of
the EU Commission, José Manuel Barroso, last week
visited Limerick to make the announcement that 1,900
Limerick workers who lost their jobs at Dell are to
benefit from almost €15 million in support under the
EGF.
The fund came into force in early 2007, months after
the last of the Fruit of the Loom workers were made
redundant in Donegal, but the Sinn Féin councillor
believes that successive Ministers for Trade and
Employment have missed |
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a trick by failing to
access the fund retrospectively on behalf of former
Fruit of the Loom employees.
“The €15 million for Limerick’s Dell workers further
evidence of the sickening neglect of Donegal,” said
Cllr MacLochlainn who added that while he wished the
Limerick workers well, the news of the grant was
‘"urther evidence of the sickening neglect of
Donegal and of the absolute impotence of our Donegal
based Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade,
and Employment, Mary Coughlan". |
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“This fund came in only
months after the last of the 3,500 jobs were lost at
Fruit of the Loom plants across North Donegal at
Buncrana, Milford, Raphoe, and Malin Head. Surely
the Government should have made a special case for
Fruit of the Loom?" he asked.
Cllr MacLochlainn believes that the |
Government should have
done more when the criteria for the fund was being
drawn up in 2005 to ensure it aided the Inishowen
textiles industry.
“The excuse that this fund came in after Fruit of
the Loom doesn’t stand up because our Government
through their representation on the Council of
Ministers were involved in drawing up the criteria
for the fund so they could have made a special case
for Fruit of the Loom,” said Cllr MacLochlainn, who
will be putting an emergency motion to next week’s
meeting of Donegal County Council to find out why
this didn’t happen.
“I am demanding that An Tánaiste Mary Coughlan
explain to the people of our county why the
Government have lost us this massive funding and how
they now intend to address this scandal,” added the
former Mayor of Buncrana.
“The numbers of Donegal men and women on the dole
queues has recently passed 21,000. That is
approximately 30% of our workforce. Yet, incredibly,
our Government did not apply to the European
Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) on behalf of the
3,500 Fruit of the Loom workers who had lost their
jobs; a fund put in place to support workers in a
region affected by mass redundancies due to the
global economy.
"An injection of millions of euro from the fund to
assist with job-search assistance, tailor-made
retraining, entrepreneurship promotion, aid for
self-employment, special temporary income
supplements such as job-search allowances, mobility
allowances, training allowances, and measures to
stimulate disadvantaged or older workers to remain
in or return to the labour market, would be of
immense benefit to thousands of our unemployed
workers," he said. |
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