“The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment needs to give an undertaking that she will immediately underwrite the applications from former SR Technic employees for third-level education courses while they await confirmation of the European Globalisation Fund to ensure that these people get access to courses before the close off date for funding under the Fund in October 2011.
“There needs to be an undertaking from the Minister that she will directly intervene in the decision by the Dublin Institute of Technology not to proceed with the proposed acceleration of the Engineering Systems Maintenance course for the former SR Technic employees, because of the failure by her Department to commit to, or underwrite funds for the course.”
“These former employees of SR Technics have been left in limbo. The application to the European Commission to draw down the European Globalisation Fund has been further delayed and in the meantime, these people are unable to take up the training and education courses that were promised to them eleven months on. All the minister has to do is to underwrite the funding of these courses but so far she has failed to do that, or to even give a commitment that she will.
“A proclaimed central plank of Government policy has been the development of the knowledge economy and the further training and upskilling of workers. However when I challenged the Minister today to underwrite funding for the course at DIT, she sat completely ignorant and indifferent to the plight of these workers.
“The Government and especially the Tánaiste have failed the people of SR Technics; failed to retain their jobs, failed to create alternative employment for them and now failed to guarantee them education, upskilling and training.”
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