The Limerick Blogger: latest Limerick news and Limerick events

A report in thts weekend;s Limerick Leader says that Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell computers is expected to travel to Limerick next month

He is expected to confirm the company[s plans to make major cuts at the Limerick facility as part of their $3bn cost cutting plan.

Reports since Sunday claim that upwards of 2,000 manufacturing jobs will be axed while recearch and development, along with administrative positions will remain largely unaffected, however when companies that service and supply Dell are taken into consideration, anywhere between ten and fifteen thousand jobs could be affected.

UPDATE: Taoiseach Brian Cowen has rejected calls for his personal intervention in relation to the threatened pull out by Dell.

We have put the business case to people, that’s what we do when people are conducting major re-organisations of companies,” he told RTE News.

“Dell has been indicating for the last good while that they are going to rearrange what they produce, how they produce it, where they produce it — and they have tens of thousands of people in that company.

“We have been making the case — the Tánaiste has been making the case — that they do a number of things apart from the high- end services, can we build on that?”

Gardai are on the scene where a body was discovered in the Hyde Road area of the city.

The human remains are believed to have been at the scene for as long as six months.  However, foul play is not suspected at this time.

The deceased has not yet been named.

UPDATE: Further information on the man whose remains were found on Hyde Road on Tuesday have emerged.

The Irish Examiner reports that he was originally from North Cork, and was in the process of moving from a flat on Hyde Road to a house in Vises Court when he was last seen alive.

The paper reports that concerns were raised when he fell into arrears with his rent.  When council officials called to his new address they were told by neighbours that he had gone away to Cork.  They then contacted social services who visited his old address and found his remains at the Hyde Road flat.

Foul play has been ruled out by Gardai in a death that has been described as a tragedy.

Irish Examiner story

Our pick at Number 9 is Puppet with No Strings – Dusting goes to Serbia

The eyes of Europe were on Limerick when Ireland voted to send a real Turkey to the Eurovision Song Contest.

There were calls for Ireland to be disqualified after voters sent Dustin the Turkey to sing Ireland’s song, “Irlande Doux Pointe.”

Some events we have been asked to let you know about taking place this week

The Histrionic Productions youth theatre group, are throwing their Christmas bash upstairs at Dolan’s tomorrow night.

There will be free entertainment and food and all are welcome.  The festivities kick off at 1900 hrs.

To find out more about Histrionic Productions visit their website and their Bebo page.

Also, The Hitchers will be playing live at Baker Place on 27 December.

Support bands on the night will include Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters.

Tickets for this event are availible from The Hitchers website.

There has been great fallout from a report in the Sunday Business Post which claimed that a delegation of governministers to Dell Computers’ headquarters in Texas was unable to desuade the company from making huge cuts to Limerick’s manufacturing campus in Raheen.

Fine Gael Limerick TD Kieran O’Donnell was highly critical of efforts by the Government to save what is expected to be a 2,000 cut in Dell’s workforce.

“If the Government had been serious about saving Dell jobs, action would have been taken far sooner. Mary Coughlan and Willie O’Dea’s visit (to Dell’s Texas headquarters last week] would appear to have been pure window-dressing. That Brian Cowen did not take any personal direct action shows both incompetence and a complete lack of understanding of the magnitude of the situation.”

Labour TD Jan O’Sullivan demanded clarification from the Government on it’s position on the reports.

“Minister Coughlan has a duty to the workers in Dell to clarify and update them on exactly what is the plan by Dell Inc regarding their Irish operations, and what the Government is doing in order to retain these jobs.”

Meanwhile, an unnamed employee of the company, speaking during a Live 95FM vox-pop, claimed that the factory’s piping of local radio was switched off during news broadcasts about the report.

A partial restoration of Shannon’s link to Heathrow in London is expected to be announced later today as part of Aer Lingus’ defence document against a potential Ryanair takeover.

Reports in this morning’s Irish Examiner claim that two daily round trips will be announced for Monday to Friday, and one round trip for Saturday and Sunday.

This comes after government TDs threatened to support Ryanair’s take-over bid of Aer Lingus if the service was not restored.  The government owns a 25 percent stake in the airline.

From the examiner:

Aer Lingus told the Government last week that agreements with staff that reduced the cost base at Shannon had created a climate where the route would be profitable again.

Umm… wasn’t the route profitable before it was moved to Belfast?

In the run up to the new year, we will bring you ten of the strangest, oddest things to appear on the site, including humourous events which happened throughout the year.

In at Number 10 is One Man and His train

After several hundred people purchased tickets for a train from Limerick to Dublin, it departed with only one passenger.

(left to right): Kenneth Collopy, Jack Collopy, Brian Collopy, Christopher McCarthy and Jimmy Collins – Sunday Independent

Forget the handshake between Ronald Reagan and Miechiel Gorbachev, You can forget the one between Nelson Mandela and FW De Clerk, not to mention the Chuckle brothers of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley.

They can all move over as there is a new historic peace deal in town, that with Limerick’s criminal gangs.

Numerous warring gangs held what can only be described as a “peace summit” and agreed not only to end the killing, but to have monthly meetings to to resolve any disputes they might have in a peaceful fashion,

While the guns may fall silent, it is not known whether a cessation in the trading of illegal drugs in the pipeline, or whether or not this peace-loving bunch will give up Shane Geoghegan’s killers.

The whole meeting was held in camera at a hotel conference room in the city, and the Sunday Independent were granted exclusivity to the meeting.  It appears the Sunday Indo is to crime what Hello Magazine is to celebrity.

At the meeting, messages of support were conveyed from their incarsarated comrades.

The full story can be found here.

Meanwhile, the shooting incident which took place in St. Mary’s Park just hours after this meeting is not said to be feud related, but more of a local dispute.

From the Associated Press

“No, never been to the ‘black north’ before. Never seen any reason to come,” said Sean Magee, 35, a short-of-work construction worker from faraway Limerick, southwest Ireland, in the parking lot of Newry’s glitziest shopping center, the 55-shop Quays.

Magee bore the broadest of smiles and the fullest of shopping carts. He and his two friends, who had traveled eight hours by work van the night before and slept rough in the back, were pushing similar loads of beer, cider and liquor — much of it produced in the Irish Republic yet available for less than half the price in Northern Ireland.

I guess the trip is worth making for some people. Shocking that you have to travel to a different country to buy something made in your own at a better price,.

But never like this since Ireland’s partition in 1921. These days, about the only thing cheaper in the south — increasingly decried by shoppers as “the Rip-off Republic” — is the vehicle fuel required to make the trip north.

The Sunday Business Post is claiming that Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan, along with Defence Minister Willie O’Dea, travelled out to Dell Computer’s headquarters in Dallas in a desperate bid to save jobs at their Limerick facility.

According to the paper, their efforts were in vain as upwards of 2,500 jobs are expected to go in the new year.

It is also claimed that only some laptop manufacturing will stay in Limerick, along with some non-manufacturing jobs, while the bulk of production will be moved to Eastern Europe.

UPDATE: Political reaction to the news that Government representatives were unable to save 2,000 jobs at Dell

The potential loss in job numbers locally will have a devastating effect on the entire economy of the Mid West Region and will result in thousands of workers and their families facing a very uncertain future.

Recent Government initiatives to protect and safeguards jobs in both the banking and agricultural sectors must be now be extended to ensure that multinationals employing thousands workers are encouraged to retain their operations in this Country.

Until an official statement is issued by Dell Inc the Government must commit and explore every possible option in order to retain all existing jobs in Dell. The Limerick plant has been widely acknowledged as one of the most efficient and productive operations within the group worldwide. This success is largely due to the commitment and loyalty of their workforce locally.’ – Jan O’Sullivan TD, Labour Party spokesperson on Health and Limerick TD

“The Government has been negligent to people here in Limerick. It should, months ago, as a matter of urgency, have put in place a contingency plan to deal with any such closure. These plans should have included efforts to source a replacement industry or industries. The closure of manufacturing at Dell will be a major economic disaster for Limerick and having seen the warning signs it is simply not good enough that the government failed to act and are still waiting for this dreadful news to materialise before taking any action.

“We urged the government not to wait to engage in crisis management if this announcement came to pass. The relevant state agencies should have been already planning for a worst case scenario. We urged the Government back in September to seeks this clarification and the Government almost seems to have hoped that if it ignored the problem it would go away unfortunately it hasn’t and this catastrophe is now unfolding upon us. It is estimated 6 in every 100 people in the Mid-West are dependent on Dell for their income. This is dreadful news for those employed in Dell and the thousands more dependent on the Raheen facility for their livelihoods.” – Maurice Quinlivan, Sinn Fein Local Election Candidate in Limerick North