The Ulster Unionist Party has expressed its shock at the scale of the job losses announced by engineering firm FG Wilson.
Economy spokesperson Sandra Overend said:
“FG Wilson is Northern Ireland’s twelfth largest private sector company providing 3,000 jobs across three sites at Larne, Monkstown, Springvale and Belfast.
Today’s news of up to seven hundred job losses is a massive blow, not just for the East Antrim constituency but for Northern Ireland as a whole.
The July announcement of potential job losses gave rise to speculation that FG Wilson were experiencing continuing problems, with rumours circulating of a possible move to China and today’s announcement attributes the need for job cuts to a drop off in demand from the Eurozone and the decision to move some manufacturing to China.
Earlier this week the unemployment data showed that 63,100 unemployed in Northern Ireland and to that we can add another 760 in a single day.
An earlier decision re the devolution of Corporation Tax varying powers to Northern Ireland would certainly have made any move of production to China less attractive. We need early action not prevarication. The Executive must now engage in a serious re-appraisal of the economic strategy and I would urge them to consider funding capital infrastructure projects to create the jobs our economy so desperately needs.
Basil McCrea, Chair of the Stormont Employment & Learning committee said
“This announcement is worse than expected and the loss of so many high quality high skilled jobs is a devastating blow to the Northern Ireland economy. We simply cannot afford to continue haemorrhaging jobs. There has been a great deal of focus on the need to rebalance the Northern Ireland economy and increase the number of private sector jobs, yet here we are losing 760 of them.
Why did Invest NI not know that this was coming? They should have been working closely with the company in an effort to ensure it remained profitable. I fear this is another example of complacency within the Departments responsible and a failure to take seriously the loss of private sector jobs. The rest of the UK is showing signs of recovery led by an increase in the number of private sector jobs yet even before this announcement we were showing a continuing decline.
We need a root and branch review of how we make Northern Ireland competitive and we must preserve the industrial and manufacturing heritage and skills base we have. It is essential that DEL take steps to secure these skills and ensure that other companies in Northern Ireland who are suffering from a skills shortage can benefit from this.
East Antrim MLA Roy Beggs expressed his dismay.
“This is a devastating blow to East Antrim and further afield. This will affect literally hundreds of my constituents and constitute a massive loss of spending power from the local economy. I will be doing all in my power to ensure that the Executive does everything possible to minimise the impact of this announcement and to do all in its power to help those affected find new jobs.”
ENDS