160 JOBS are to be lost at the pharmaceutical company Shearing-Plough pharmaceutical company at it’s Cork plant over the next three years. The company have said they are seeking voluntary redundancies.

The IDA said that there was going to be ‘pain for Cork as a result of mergers and acquisitions taking place within the pharmaceutical sector’ and it is without doubt voluntary redundancies being sough by Shearing-Plough at their manufacturing plant at Brinny near Innishannon in West Cork will add significantly to this pain.

Already there are 63,700 people in the south-west region unemployed according to the latest CSO figures for August 2010 and 11,650 of these are under 25 years of age. Any job losses or redundancies at Shearing-Plough will see significant increases to these figures. In real terms, there will be hundreds of families affected by the results of today’s meeting with staff and management.

Changes within the pharmaceutical industry including the end of drug patents and generic drug creation have been quoted as a factor in the loss of the jobs in the Cork region in recent months but also an increase in government related costs including the increase of utilities, energy costs and competitiveness are also playing a significant part in these losses.

According to the World Economic Forum’s annual rankings as published in today’s Irish Times, Ireland is ranked 29th most competitive country in the World and “is attributable to a weakening macroeconomic environment as well as continuing concerns related to financial markets”.

Like Pfizer’s who shed 300 jobs in May, Shering-Plough underwent a large merger with with another industry giant, Merck, last year and today’s announcement has been as a result of reviewing their global operations. Unfortunately both mergers for Pfizer’s and Shering-Plough proved unfavourable for Cork employees.

Fine Gael are meeting today (Thursday) as part of our annual two-day strategy meeting and we are all equally stating that job creation is paramount. What we need now, and there is huge attitude out there for it, is clear defined policies that will will lead to job prospects for the thousands unemployed in the country.