The Minister for Training and Skills, Ciaran Cannon T.D. today launched an Open Day to showcase supports for workers made redundant at the Andersen Ireland fashion jewellery manufacturing plant in Rathkeale, Co. Limerick under a proposed European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) programme.
The Department of Education and Skills recently submitted an application for co-funding support to the European Commission for a programme of guidance, training, education and enterprise supports. A decision on the application is expected towards the end of the year with the programme of measures being funded from national sources in the interim.
Minister Cannon said “I am encouraging all in the Andersen Ireland workforce to look closely at the range of opportunities to upskill which are on offer today in Rathkeale and to take advice and soundings from the experts on hand as to what might best suit their own personal circumstances to progress in terms of greater job-readiness”.
Some 171 persons, almost 70% of them women, were made redundant in the last quarter of 2013 from the plant which had been a main employer in the Rathkeale and the West Limerick area since 1976. The job losses had a major impact on a community that already suffers from considerable socio-economic disadvantage and where unemployment is almost double the national average.
The Department of Education and Skills has successfully run programmes since 2009 under the EGF for over 9,700 redundant workers in the construction sector and at companies such as Dell, Waterford Crystal, S R Technics and Talk Talk.
EGF programmes are of a finite two years duration and aim to provide workers made redundant as a result of the adverse impacts of globalisation with increased guidance, skills and education or enterprise supports to be better able to keep in touch with the labour market and to improve their overall skills base.
Among the service providers participating in the open day event held in the Rathkeale House Hotel were the local enterprise and training boards, local enterprise offices, Skillnets, SOLAS, Limerick Institute of Technology and various private training and education bodies.
The programme is being coordinated by the SOLAS EGF coordination unit based in Raheen, Co. Limerick and plans are in train to open a local office in the Newcastlewest area for the duration of the programme.
The event was hosted by the Limerick City and County Manager, Conn Murray, and addressed by Minister Cannon. The Minister stated, “We have seen the benefits of EGF participation most recently in Waterford where over 70% of the affected workforce took up supports under the Talk Talk programme. I hope that we can achieve the same types of reach and beneficial outcomes that have been achieved under that programme here in West Limerick”.
In a new departure under the EGF Regulations governing the Fund, to which Ireland contributed significantly during its 2013 Presidency of the EU, programmes may now offer supports to a similar number of targeted young persons under the age of 25 years not in employment, education or training. This approach is being piloted in the EGF Andersen Ireland programme for the first time in Ireland and amongst the first in any EU Member State to date.