Business community react to rumours of Dell job losses
"IT'S a message not just for the region but the whole country," was the reaction of founding UL president Dr Edward Walsh to Dell's plans to drastically reduce its Limerick manufacturing operation with the potential loss of 2,000 jobs.
Dr Walsh added the impact of Dell's probable decision to slash two thirds of its workforce in the city will be "enormous".
"For each job you have in a multinational, there are four support jobs, so we are looking at an impact of 10,000 jobs," he said.
However, he said that the impact is wider – and Ireland's decision makers should have acted sooner.
"When Dell started to build its plant in Poland, I think there was a level of concern at the activities, and that Limerick's plant may be reduced or phased out. But we are pricing ourselves out of business, we are paying ourselves too much. We need to cutback. In the private sector many people are taking pay cuts, the public sector must do likewise," he said.
Former Dell executive Reg Freake estimated the impact on jobs in the Limerick area alone will be around 5,000.
"This will have the biggest effect of anywhere in the country. Wherever there are similar manufacturing operations, these will be at stake," he added.
Limerick Chamber president Sean Lally stressed that the loss of 2,000 jobs was "still all speculation".
"I would hope that if we are talking about potential job losses of that order, that they would be spread out over a number of years to give the workforce the opportunity to reskill and seek employment in different areas of the organisation," he said.
Mr Lally called on the Government to stage talks with the IDA, Shannon Development and the area's chambers of commerce to come up with a long term plan.
Limerick chamber chief executive Maria Kelly told the Limerick Leader: "The two burning questions are: how many? and: When? It could be, and this is what are hoping to hear, that it will be a gradual wind-down of operations over a period of time, but there will definitely be a level of job losses.
"The best thing we could hear is a wind-down over somewhere in the region of four to five years. I would hope Dell retain some of the manufacturing sectors for some of the larger desktops and servers which are extremely efficient and its staff are extremely good at producing. I would hope that would remain in Limerick where they are close to the European market."
Ms Kelly dismissed claims the Government could have done more to avert the job losses.
"We are talking about a commercial company reacting to their own commercial realities in an economic downturn. I'm not sure what pressure Government could have put on them. I know it is putting a lot of pressure on them to keep a lot of top scale jobs like R&D. The more people it can transfer to these areas, the better off we are," she said.
Fianna Fail Cllr Michael Collins of Newcastle West's Chamber of Commerce predicted that, of the 2,000 losing their jobs "at least a couple of hundred" will come from the town.
"There has been speculation for some while and some talk of jobs going from Dell, and closing the plant in Limerick. I felt it was a case of when, rather than if. We were expecting some sort of announcement.
"But how can you criticise the Government? Dell are a private company, they can do what they see fit. We don't know what was discussed at top level last week. That may come out over the next number of weeks, then we might know what the Government was offering," he said.
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