Marian Harkin, MEP
THE IRISH Government has failed to properly benefit from a European fund which could have brought much-needs cash to the country, local MEP Marian Harkin has said.
The fact that Ireland had not to date maximised the use of the annual €150 million EU Globalisation Fund need to be addressed, she said.
This is one of the issues to be discussed at a meeting of stakeholders convened by Independent MEP MarianHarkin in conjunction with the European Parliament’s Dublin office to help provide her with proposals for inclusion in the Parliament’s report on the operation of the Globalisation Fund.
“As the European Parliament’s representative on the Globalisation Fund I have some reservations on how it has been used in Ireland and, in my view, has lacked coherence and, in some cases, has been ignored to the detriment of redundant workers and young unemployed people who are not in education or training”, she said.
The objective of the stakeholder consultations was to identify weaknesses in how the Globalisation Fund had been utilised up to now and involved a broad range of agencies from Trades Unions, Government departments, employers and past Fund users, Independent MEP Marian Harkin said
She warned that a major effort had to be made to persuade many reluctant member states to support the current fund and any proposals for its future development needed to be firmly based on its ability to deliver measureable results for redundant workers.
“The news this week that 15,000 steel workers in the UK may lose their jobs, due to globalisation, emphasises the value of having a fund of sufficient scale to support redundant workers and it is particularly ironic that the UK was prominent in opposing the existing fund which I and others had a very hard battle to secure”, said Harkin.
