RECYCLING CENTRE STAFF SHOULD BE APPOINTED "RECYCLING CONSULTANTS".
Issued : Thursday 14 May, 2009
Labour Local Election Candidate and member of SIPTU, Barry Nevin, is calling on Wicklow County Council to reinstate the staff at the Bray Recycling Centre as "Recycling Consultants".
"We have all heard the news that senior engineers in Wicklow County Council who had retired from their positions were reinstated as "consultants", said Barry Nevin. "I believe that in light of the fact that the existing staff of the Recycling Centre built up the service from when it first opened three years ago and the Centre won the Repak Recycling Centre of the Year Award for 2008, that Wicklow County Council should appoint them as Recycling Consultants.
"Provision has already been made in the 2009 Annual Budget for the continued operation of the Recycling Centre and Wicklow County Council recently negotiated an extension of the lease for the premises.
"It seems to me that the Government is playing silly beggars with the livelihoods of the staff of the centre. Both the Minister for Finance and the Minister for the Environment are saying it's the other's responsibility. I have just received confirmation from my colleague Deputy Liz McManus in a reply to a Parliamentary Question she put to the Minister for Finance that Local Authority staffing matters are the responsibility of the Minister for the Environment. Yet we are hearing Minister John Gormley deny this vigorously.
"It is a terrible situation that people's lives are being messed around in this way. Local people who have put such tremendous work into establishing the Recycling Centre as a state of the art facility are now being forced out of their employment.
"I am calling on the County Manager to immediately contact the Minister for the Environment requesting that the existing jobs at the centre be retained as only he has the power to do this. Furthermore I am calling on him to follow the lead that the Council has already set with the retired engineers and to appoint the staff of the centre as Recycling Consultants", he concluded.
Cllr 
