The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, has made representations to the management of Seagate Technology to try to get some severance pay for more than 300 temporary employees of the Clonmel factory who are due to be laid off next weekend with no redundancy or severance entitlements.
The plant is to cease production in mid-February, when the remainder of the 1,400 workers will be laid off. About 700 of the permanent employees have two years' service with the company and will get severance payments amounting to about £3,400 each. Those with shorter service will get proportionately lesser amounts.
Ms Harney yesterday attended the inaugural meeting of a local task force, which is to seek alternative industries for the plant and to advise the Minister on ways to assist the workers and ease the impact on the local economy.
Ms Harney said an advisory service would be put in place from today to deal with the individual needs of the workers. It will be co-ordinated by the regional director of FAS, Ms Mary Dorgan, and will include representatives of the Department of Family and Community Affairs and of the SouthEastern Health Board.
She said the IDA hoped to bring potential new investors to inspect the Seagate site very soon. "If the site is made available, as the management have promised, at a reasonable price, then it will be very attractive," she said.
The Tanaiste has already made contact with financial institutions with offices or branches in the area which may have advanced loans or mortgages to Seagate workers.
She said: "I intend to speak to all the chief executives of the financial institutions that the workers have mortgages from. I am asking them to be sympathetic and understanding in their dealings with the workers, and to give them some space."
She hoped this would allay some of the "enormous fears" which the closure had caused for the laid-off workers.
There is to be a mass meeting of the workers tomorrow to elect a representative to the task force. An interim representative, Mr Jim Cahill, yesterday issued a statement expressing their thanks to everyone who had shown concern for their plight.