Rose Conway-Walsh on Workday layoffs, urges action plan

Minister, we now know that 142 staff are to be laid off by the Irish branch of the global HR and payroll processing company Workday. When were you notified of these job losses? What contact has your department had with the company and with the workers and what has been done for those workers? Have the IDA been involved and how can these workers be helped to find alternative employment and support it? This morning I want to see solidarity from this house to those workers and their families who are impacted. While the technology sector, which includes software, has undergone a period of sustained growth for the last 20 years, recently it has seen some significant contraction. Where the IDA, Ireland's multinational clients in this sector, have announced global reductions, reductions have typically been less than 10% of the global workforces. Furthermore, in most cases the job reductions implemented in Ireland have been lower in percentage terms than globally announced figures. Typically in the economy with such low levels of unemployment, employment opportunities will arise, especially for talented people employed by the software sector. Nevertheless, where such jobs are announced or losses are announced for Ireland, our first and primary concern is always with staff members and their families impacted by these decisions. The support we can provide in conjunction with our enterprise development agencies and other departments is to the forefront of our response. Moreover, the protection of the employment acts make it mandatory for employers proposing a collective redundancy to engage in an information and consultation process with employees representatives for at least 30 days and to notify me as Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment of the proposed collective redundancy. Such an employer is prohibited from issuing any notice of redundancy during the information and consultation process with employers representatives and employer can make employees redundant until at least 30 days after the Minister has been notified of the proposed collective redundancy. In such redundancy scenarios, the enterprise development agencies under my department assist where possible in helping those impacted find alternative employment. This includes sharing of skills portfolios of impacted employees and with companies which may be hiring, such as multinationals in the IDA client portfolio. Equally, working with IDA Ireland, our objective is to help and sustain and create further employment in the technology and software sector as well. In relation to the software sector, it is important to note that the commitment of technology companies in Ireland remains exceptionally strong. Last year Ireland secured investments from leading companies in this sector including Microsoft, IBM and Intercom. And just in relation to your specific question, it was this week, I just haven't got the date in front of me here because it wasn't specified in the question here for me. Thank you Minister. Minister, last month we learned that MET is to cut off 5% of its staff globally and then last year as well Intel and indeed TikTok have all notified staff of pending job losses. So as you rightly said, there is a significant contraction. I think it is very important that we have a plan in place for when this is likely to happen again in the future. Just even last night we talked about obviously with Minister Smith around AI and the implications for the Irish economy. Now there are many positive applications to that and it will continue to be a growth area but there are also significant layoffs that can be done as a result of that. So what I want to see I suppose is an action plan. Also Minister what I want to see and we talked about last night was the building up of expertise within government. So in all of these situations I think we need to be looking at the skill sets that are there and looking at what is necessary for government to be able to tap into this. I would also like to see a measurement of when these job losses happen, how long has it taken the individual workers to find work after that so that we can stay ahead of the game in this. Thank you. We have seen a recalibration in the tech sector post Covid. I would really point out that it is very strong. We have a very rich vein of talent. We have an hour host to eight of the ten global leading tech companies in this state at this point in time and we provide so much talent and skills. At this point in time with eight percent ICT graduates in our economy. That is double the EU average. We are double per head of capita in STEM graduates which provides a huge rich vein. We have as part of our digitalisation strategy very clearly a policy in relation to the tech sector which was established in February 2022. We have the white paper and enterprise which really sets out our plans and goals to achieve 90 percent digital intensity in basic SMEs by 2030 which are a very important cog in the wheel as well. Obviously we have our AI strategy which we have updated recently as last November working very closely with the AI advisory group under the chairpersonship of Dr Patricia Scanlon and we are working to implement the AI act designating our competent authorities getting our regulatory sandbox up and running. A huge amount of opportunity in this space and Ireland has the foundation to grasp that opportunity and we won't be found wanting with the resources to do so. Thank you Minister and I agree with a lot of what you have said and I suppose but in these strategies it is always in the implementation and how quickly the implementation can be done. I think there are opportunities there for self-employment as well so when people find themselves in a situation where they lose their jobs that I think we should be coming in there to support them. Now what I am finding in some areas is that when really the brightest and best young people are coming up with ideas whether it be development of apps or whatever and I spoke to one last Saturday actually in Mayo about this they're falling between the the agencies so between Udrasna Geilthakta between the Leos and between Enterprise Ireland and I'd ask you to look at that area so that none of these projects are falling between the stools because the people that they're presenting to maybe do not fully realise the potential of some of the things that they're coming forward with. We need to nurture this talent but we also need the start-ups but we also need then to ensure that these businesses can scale up as well and stay in this country. Thank you. We have a huge demand for workers in those categories and you can see that from the landscape how much it has changed right across our capital city and other regions right throughout the country that's why the idea have specifically called out digitalisation and AI as one of the key growth drivers for their new five-year strategy hoping to bring in 7 billion euro of our D&I investment 15,000 jobs per annum of growth and having 54 percent of that in region Ireland aimed at getting 550 investments right into our regions that is going to be critical to continue the agility of our economy but I would point out that there is huge demand you can see from our critical skill permits that we're trying to bring in workers through legal pathways to feed a very growing and strong industry and while there was recalibration in certain companies the growth is very significant and you can see that from the announcements in AI some incredible companies setting up part of that landscape as headquarters in Ireland which we very much welcome and we have the most prized resource of any country that's our people those are our skills and we're ready to absorb that opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.