The Labour Party has condemned a report that Irish Ferries are to receive a contribution from the exchequer of €4.3 million towards their redundancy bill.
It was reported earlier today that the company would receive £4.3 million from the exchequer as part of the statutory redundancy rebate scheme.
The company qualified for the scheme after it controversially made more than 500 of its seafaring workers redundant last year and replaced them with workers on lower pay.
In September 2005, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern condemned the Irish Ferries measure as "deplorable."
The redundancy scheme was heavily opposed by the country's unions as a means to replace staff with employees on lower pay.
In a statement released this evening, Labour Party spokesperson on the Marine Tommy Broughan said Irish Ferries "should not be financed in any way by the Irish taxpayer."
"Irish Ferries' workers have paid their social contributions, often for over 30 years to the Irish state. They never imagined that having paid into these funds they could then be used in such a cynical way to help finance their removal from their own jobs," he concluded.