A Carlow-Kilkenny TD has raised concerns in the Dáil over the future of staff at Carlow College.
The institution will wind down over the next two years with 87 staff told this week they are to lose their jobs.
Calls have been made for enhanced redundancy packages, with claims that statutory redundancy alone would not be enough to support long-serving employees affected by the closure.
Fine Gael’s Catherine Callaghan has told the Dáil that staff are worried,
“One staff member said to me, this isn’t a job to us, it’s our life’s work. We’ve given years, some of us decades, to this college. Now we’re being asked to walk away without knowing how we’ll support our families or what comes next.”
Minister for Defence and Trade Helen McEntee had this response,
“You rightly say you have excellent people who have been working there for many years and we need to make sure that they are supported.“
“I know that the Minister has been engaging directly with the College because of the fact that they are a private, autonomous institution outside of the publicly funded higher education system. So, while there is a need to respect their autonomy, we need to make sure that where you have such highly skilled and educated and trained people and professionals who have been imparting their knowledge on students for years.”
