Irish Pride staff face uncertain future

Ciara Galvin

‘What am I going to do next?’. That was the reaction of bakery worker Pat McDonald, when he and other staff at Irish Pride were told that the plant was to close.
Pat has worked in the bakery for over 15 years, since he was 16 years old, and now he faces a future of uncertainty as he finishes work in Irish Pride on Thursday.
“What can you do about it? There’s not many places around taking on people. There’s nothing around, so I’m going to take a few weeks off and send out some CVs,” said McDonald.
The 32 year old, who was in a supervisory role at the bakery, told The Mayo News that he might have to look into retraining in order to secure a job.
“A recruitment agency was brought in last week, but the evening shift weren’t told about it so, we didn’t even have CVs with us,” said the Ballinrobe man.
Commenting on the process of winding down the plant and helping staff find alternative employment, Mr McDonald said: ‘I think it was poorly handled’.
“We didn’t get half the amount of information we should have been getting. We’d show up to do our job and be told things last minute.”
According to McDonald, many of the workers had worked at the bakery for decades. “The shortest-term people in the bakery have probably worked there for seven years, and the then there’s others who have 40 years service and might not have anywhere to go because of their age,” concluded McDonald.
Another staff member, who has worked in the bakery for 13 years, told The Mayo News that ‘empathy’ was the only thing received from politicians, including An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, following the announcement.
In relation to finding future employment, the father of one said he would have to look beyond Ballinrobe for a job, commenting that the jobs market in the town is ‘stagnant’.
“I’m worried about payment too. We’re dealing with three separate departments, but it could be anything from three to six weeks for social welfare and eight weeks for redundancy. That’s a long time with no money coming in to houses,” said the 39 year old.
He continued: “I work with a man who has four children, with one in college and two of them unemployed, and his wife is unemployed … I can’t imagine that house when we finish up.”
Speaking about how the closure was handled, the worker said he and the entire staff were ‘kept in the dark’.
“There was nothing concrete, nothing put up on noticeboards. We didn’t receive much information, it was mostly Chinese whispers.”