Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to give a cautious welcome to the news overnight that Tara Mines in Navan is to reopen on a gradual basis. This mine, the largest sink mine in Europe, has been closed for nine long months, with more than 600 employees left on minimal support. It has been nine long months when there has been very little goodwill from the company towards this workforce in Navan. It is my sense there has been a strategy to starve these workers into submission and get to this point.

I thank the unions for the work they have conducted in bringing about these negotiations with the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. I hope the detail, which has yet to be published in the public domain, will not see a significant diminution of the workers' terms and conditions, which they have secured over many years in working in extremely perilous circumstances deep underground.

My thoughts are with the nearly 200 people who, through a voluntary redundancy package, will reduce the workforce to a little over 400. While I welcome the fact we have a draft agreement, it is wrong in the extreme that more than 600 people in Navan and the wider area have been left in this position for over nine months. I hope the detail, when published, will be discussed in depth by the workforce and that we will see a reopening of Tara Mines.