ELEMENT SIX CLOSURE - BERTIE and BRIAN HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME

dixiefly

I cannot express my anger enough at the way that manufacturing industry has been let rot in this country by the various governments over the last 10 years. It has been obvious since 2001 / 2002 that our cost base has been eroding. The signs have been there for everyone to see where well run manufacturing plants have closed and no effort by government to understand WHY this has been happening. I have experienced it myself at first hand and, man, it is not a pretty sight.

Every time there is a closure announcement we have the same lines from the same people while those that were paid a fortune ( and continue to be paid a fortune) to manage our economy did nothing about it and in reality f*cking ignored what was happening. Bertie didnt give a sh1t about it because he was too busy feathering his own nest and patting himself on the back for stuff he had a tenuous involvement in. Mary Coughlan is out of her depth, however is it her to blame for her incompetance or the idiot that picked her???

In industry, in order to be competitive, there are systems to investigate when problems occur and put in corrective action in order to prevent if at all possible in the future. Our so called leaders should have been looking for answers in 2002/ 2003/ 2004 as to why there was a steady drip of companies leaving. If they had then the corrective action may have been put in and the rot could have stopped. It mighnt have helped the company I worked for but it may have stopped the closures of the relatively higher end companies like Element Six, SR Technics, Dell, Boston Tullamore, Bausch & Lomb, Waterford Glass, ABB etc etc.

Did these half wits in Government not realise that if a number of companies were closing then it was pretty likely that other companies were also hurting and that eventually they would go the same way if something wasnt done about ie??? What were the senior civil servants & IDA guys saying? They should have been camped on Bertie's door instead of accepting their criminally high benchmarking payments.

I actually think that we have already crossed into the abiss on manufacturing and it will be so so so difficult to build any sort of a manufacturing base again considering the investments needed and how much of a foothold that China & Eastern Europe has taken.

Some people in the country dont care, various professionals etc who havent been effected by the recession - I overheard some the other evening and all they were talking about was holidays FFS!

Another one, there is as much talk about the redundancy payments. In my opinion the major issue is that hose jobs are gone for future generations and that there are less jobs in the area and so many more businesses will be effected.

Rant over & I am so annoyed I will probably post this also on the local mid west board even though I am not from the area.

artful_codger

oh what a crock of ****, i can't even be bothered reading past the first two paragraphs. Manufacturing is a low skilled sector, how can Ireland even begin to compete with the likes of China in this regard, so unless you're willing to work for 7 dollars a day then just accept that no amount of government support will help. I'm glad to see manufacturing disappear from Ireland, we should be moving up the food chain to higher skilled and higher paid jobs and not just pouring money into industries that traditionally pollute the environment and turn our cities into brownfield eyesores. Spend money on education instead, invest in knowledge not man power. The loom factories died out 100 years ago in Ireland, but Ireland survived and created jobs in other areas. People have to move up the value chain and not just be happy to pack boxes for a living, we should be a beacon of progress and intellectual capital, and if you're not willing to upskill then i've no sympathy for ya. The suggestion that ireland can't survive without manufacturing is retarded.

omerin

i agree with some of your points op. the government for far too long has ignored the decline in manufacturing. they seem to be too disconnected with the public they represent.
i also agree with codger, we can't compete with the far east and eastern europe for the manufacture of a product that has a reasonable volume. however codger there have been many so called high end, high skilled jobs lost in the last year or so also, so its not the answer to our prayers.
the green partys scheme to create 30000 jobs in the next number of years around info technology, clean energy announced yesterday has me further convinced that they are away with the fairies as if i wasn't already when they stated they hoped that in the near future ireland will be manufacturing electric vehicles. sure we will :rolleyes:

leeroybrown

dixiefly wrote: »

I actually think that we have already crossed into the abiss on manufacturing and it will be so so so difficult to build any sort of a manufacturing base again considering the investments needed and how much of a foothold that China & Eastern Europe has taken.

We passed that point years ago. Most manufacturing activities that aren't high-value or don't require being local to some resource/market have been dying out for well over a decade. Cast your mind back fifteen years to the mid 1990's and you'll find the demise of the clothing manufacturing industry here.

In my view the timing of the downturn is disastrous for the remaining Irish high-value manufacturing. A number of years ago we reached a point where, in terms of wage costs, energy costs and infrastructure costs, we were no longer competitive for new investment. We were essentially riding out the current investments, grant lifetimes, etc. and those jobs would have gone over time. One economic meltdown later and pretty much every large multinational in the world has had to fast forward a decision about their future in Ireland by about five years.

x in the city

artful_codger wrote: »

oh what a crock of ****, i can't even be bothered reading past the first two paragraphs. Manufacturing is a low skilled sector, how can Ireland even begin to compete with the likes of China in this regard, so unless you're willing to work for 7 dollars a day then just accept that no amount of government support will help. I'm glad to see manufacturing disappear from Ireland, we should be moving up the food chain to higher skilled and higher paid jobs and not just pouring money into industries that traditionally pollute the environment and turn our cities into brownfield eyesores. Spend money on education instead, invest in knowledge not man power. The loom factories died out 100 years ago in Ireland, but Ireland survived and created jobs in other areas. People have to move up the value chain and not just be happy to pack boxes for a living, we should be a beacon of progress and intellectual capital, and if you're not willing to upskill then i've no sympathy for ya. The suggestion that ireland can't survive without manufacturing is retarded.

a lot of the work would be low skilled manual work, but quite a lot of 'manufacturing' work involves engineers, r&d and test etc

its the high costs in this area as much as anything thats a problems as these areas are also dirt cheap in other countries, let alone manual labour

Ireland cant even afford skilled workers at this stage... how many engineering grads are looking for work..:rolleyes:

dixiefly

artful_codger wrote: »

oh what a crock of ****, i can't even be bothered reading past the first two paragraphs. Manufacturing is a low skilled sector, how can Ireland even begin to compete with the likes of China in this regard, so unless you're willing to work for 7 dollars a day then just accept that no amount of government support will help. I'm glad to see manufacturing disappear from Ireland, we should be moving up the food chain to higher skilled and higher paid jobs and not just pouring money into industries that traditionally pollute the environment and turn our cities into brownfield eyesores. Spend money on education instead, invest in knowledge not man power. The loom factories died out 100 years ago in Ireland, but Ireland survived and created jobs in other areas. People have to move up the value chain and not just be happy to pack boxes for a living, we should be a beacon of progress and intellectual capital, and if you're not willing to upskill then i've no sympathy for ya. The suggestion that ireland can't survive without manufacturing is retarded.

Dont get me wrong. I am not niaive enough to believe that all manufacturing type industry would have been saved had the Government implemented policies designated to keep us competitive. However, I do believe that the relatively higher end stuff across a wide range of sectors would have been kept in better shape had costs in this country not been allowed spiral out of control.

Do you remember in the early years of this decade the warnings from the EU that our cost base was spiralling out of control and that we were heading for a big fall? Bertie and Charlie McCreevy kept on saying that Ireland was a special case and ignored the view of some of the experts in the EU. They said we were a special case and our boom was due to other factors. We were a special case alright, we were in a geographically more remote position to the rest of europe thus meaning that we had to always be a step ahead to counteract the location and additional transport costs we often have to incur.

On top of the above, our energy prices should always have been a top priority. I know that our location doesnt help but we pay the ESB and their workers way too much for the service they provideand our industries have paid the price.

We cannot just give up and accept that all manufacturing is gone and do nothing about it. An economy needs a wide range of activities to survive and keep it's citizens in worthwhile employment. I cannot deny the relentless move to china but I am convinced that we could have reduced the speed of the flow and stopped some of it had we implemented better policies. Some companies may still stay here even of the costs are higher once they are not let get TOO high. Remember also that we have indigenous multi-nationals whose senior management may prefer not to move plants and may even accept some difference in costs in order to keep a presence here but with the way costs have spiralled these companies may be forced into closing.
In my opinion at the very least we should be competitive with the UK/ NI. To allow that differential build up as it has is criminal. We got nothing but excuses for years and it is only in the last year that our leaders have realised the mess we have allowed to develop.

We paid (and continue to pay) Bertie, Brian, Charlie and senior civil servants huge money to put in policies for the long term good of the country - not policies to help the boys get re-elected.

Nolanger

I grew up in Waterford City and knew guys who went into factories after finishing school. They're f*cked now - middle-aged, no other skills, and haven't a hope of finding work. Thing is these kind of people pushed the 'brighter' ones away - there was a union-type culture there where if you knew the right people they would set you up for life in a local factory. It was a 'them-against-us' scenario and if you didn't fit in you 'got out of town' to find work or go to college. Now all they have there are loads of unemployed people while the best brains moved elsewhere. Very sad and it will take years to recover.