Corkery says Raheen plant was no longer competitive

“The hardest thing I have ever had to do” - Corkery

Dell’s vice-president of operations in Europe, Sean Corkery, has told local radio station Live95FM this afternoon of how EMEA manufacturing and its cost structure in Limerick was no longer competitive for Dell,

“It was basically a decision that was based on our strategy to restructure the company around cost and so it became apparent to us that our cost structure within EMEA manufacturing here in Ireland was not competitive, so we now have an opportunity to move into the lower cost centre of Poland."

Asked if he knew of how many more jobs would be affected by todays decision, Corkery said he wasn’t sure but said speculation in the area of 15,000 jobs was a “Grossly exaggerated” figure.

“It’s a much smaller number than that. We would put it probably more or less at 1,500 directly involved that support us every day”

He also described the redundancy package, 4 weeks from Dell along with the 2 weeks given by the state for every year worked as “very competitive”

Finally he was asked what it was like to tell thousands of people their jobs would be gone by 2010, he replied,

“It was very difficult, the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Im in this industry 27 years and I wouldn’t like to go through that again”