Press Release

LRC head says Vita Cortex owner should pay up

Date Released: 24 January 2012

The chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission (LRC), Kieran Mulvey, has said it is up to the owner of Vita Cortex to pay agreed redundancy terms to workers who have lost their jobs. After 12 hours of discussions involving SIPTU and the management of Vita Cortex at the LRC on Friday (20th January) in Cork talks were adjourned without agreement.

Kieran Mulvey said: “What's separating the parties here is €372,000. In the business of industrial relations it is a drop in the ocean.

“It is not for NAMA to give the nod, it is for the beneficial owner of Vita Cortex. NAMA have to be careful that they also, in their circumstances, are not diluting assets to the benefit of someone who is in NAMA and who probably, privately, has the capacity to pay.”

The Vita Cortex owner Jack Ronan had been expected to identify an unencumbered asset and agree terms for its handover to NAMA.  This would have allowed NAMA, which has frozen several of his other assets, to release certain funds which Ronan would use to pay the Vita Cortex workers’ redundancy.

It is understood that in the final hours of the talks Ronan refused to agree to the hand-over of the asset until NAMA engaged with him on his wider financial issues.

SIPTU Organiser Anne Egar said Ronan is attempting to use the Vita Cortex workers as "pawns in a cynical attempt to pressurise NAMA into resolving his financial issues with them".

"We were led to believe the agreed redundancy payments would be forthcoming through the LRC process," she said. "Now it seems the owner is using that process to advance his own financial interests."

The 32 Vita Cortex workers are in the sixth week of their sit-in at the former foam manufacturing plant on Kinsale Road, Cork. During their protest they have received huge support in the city and across the country and have also enjoyed messages of support from all over the world. Last week, former President Mary Robinson, singer Christy Moore and renowned human rights activist, Noam Chomsky, expressed their solidarity with the Vita Cortex workers.