THE government has made no significant effort to redress the job losses at Dell over the past year, according to Kieran O’Donnell, TD.
He claims that Limerick and the Mid-West has become the forgotten region for jobs investment.
“There has been no new IDA jobs announcement in Limerick since the Dell closure. By contrast, in 2009, Cork saw 870 new IDA backed jobs, Dublin saw 965, Kildare 500, Galway 171, and Donegal saw 80.
“In the past year, the entire region, including Limerick, North Tipperary, North Kerry and Clare, has seen one single new investment announcement through the IDA. This was 134 jobs in the expansion of Intel’s facility in Shannon, which was made in February.
“During this period, the Mid-West Jobs Taskforce Interim Report stated that the rate of long-term unemployment in the Mid-West is 2.1%, massively higher than the State average of 1.3%”.
Continued the TD. “The Live Register Figure for Limerick increased from 14,030 at the start of 2009 to 20,700 at the end of November, a 48% increase, well above the national average of 43%.
“Forfas, which comes under the remit of Tanaiste Mary Coughlan’s Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, predicted a year ago that direct and indirect job losses from the Dell closure would be in the order of 9,141.
“It is clear that the government does not regard Limerick as a priority region for foreign direct investment or for job creation and there are very serious questions over the government’s commitment to Limerick. None of these figures which come from its own agencies have been directly addressed.
“In the year since the Dell announcement, the IDA were not part of the Mid-West Jobs Taskforce set up in the wake of the Dell announcement. The number of IDA-facilitated visits by companies potentially investing in Limerick was only 18, as compared to 35 in 2007 and a paltry 9 in 2008. Yet the jobs lost in Dell were IDA-backed”.
