Tax Payers foot €4.3m Irish Ferries Redundancy Bill

Stephanie Lord

Redundancy (noun);
a. The state or fact of being unemployed because work is no longer offered or considered necessary.
b. A dismissal of an employee from work for being no longer necessary; a layoff.

This week it emerged that the taxpayer is to pay €4.3m towards the cost of making over 500 Irish seafarers redundant last year so that they could be replaced with low-paid, non-unionised workers from Eastern Europe. This payment comes as a result of a statutory redundancy rebate scheme which allows employers to reclaim a portion of their redundancy payments to workers. Irish Ferries have stated that the redundancy package cost the Irish Continental group of which tie company is a member of €29.1m. The decision to pay the company’s claim was delayed for nearly a year as it was referred to the Attorney General’s office to decide whether the redundancies were genuine. Under the Redundancy Payments Acts, "redundancy" does not merely arise where a business closes down or where an employer reduces the size of the workforce. The definition includes circumstances where the employer decides that different or even additional skills or qualifications are required for the job.

With the 500 Irish Ferries redundancies the business did not close down. The management of the company did not downsize – there are the same amount of workers with Irish Ferries now as before the layoffs. Given the above definition of “redundancy” and the Redundancy Payments Acts, one would be forgiven for thinking that they were not genuine. The work was still offered and still considered necessary. However, it was only going to be offered to Eastern Europeans willing to work for minimum wage and who are not trade union members. Although the trade union issue has not been raised on any official level, it is too coincidental for my liking that there are now only 4 trade union members working on board the M.V. Ulysses. The 4 trade unionists in question were Irish workers employed by Irish Ferries before the layoffs.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment endorsed the decision by the Attorney General to pay the company’s claim and said that there was no scope for “ministerial intervention”. SIPTU President, Jack O’Connor said that he was “disgusted but not surprised” by the decision. He also went on to say that when push comes to shove in a dispute between employers and workers he would never be in any doubt “which side the present Minister Micheal Martin would come down on”. It’s not very often that I agree with Jack O’Connor but in this case I have to say he’s completely and absolutely right. The decision by the Government to pay the €4.3m completely vindicates his position. This colossal sum of money was paid out to a company who claimed they needed to make over 500 crew members redundant in order to make the company “more competitive”. This is the same company who gives its chief executive Eamon Rothwell 2.5% of all the company’s earnings and gives him an annual bonus of over €420,000 on top of his normal earnings.

This redundancy scheme was quite rightly opposed by both SIPTU and the Seamen’s Union of Ireland. It was a scheme to make a company “competitive” by ensuring that there were no longer Irish workers aboard Irish Ferries vessels being paid union rates. They were replaced by outsourced Eastern European workers who work for the grand total of €7.65 per hour. And after the debacle concerning Filipino worker Salvacion Orge who was paid €1 per hour by Irish Ferries subcontractors you would probably be forgiven for wondering whether they are even receiving the minimum wage.

Irish Ferries workers paid their taxes. They paid their social contributions, some for well over 30 years. €4.3m of these funds are now being handed back to Irish Ferries out of the taxpayers pocket. It appears that the final kick in the teeth for the ex-Irish Ferries workers is that the money that they have been paid over the years has now in effect been used to finance their removal from their own jobs.


For my Dad Brian, who worked for Irish Ferries and was a member of the Seamen’s Union of Ireland for 25 years.