There is a serious jobs crisis in Kerry. I wish to raise the closure of BorgWarner in Tralee. This bombshell occurred a couple of days ago and took the workers and the town of Tralee by surprise. It was akin to the bombing of Pearl Harbour. I thank the Tánaiste for already showing an interest in this serious issue. I must explain that this amount of jobs being lost in Kerry, which has a population of 150,000, is equivalent to 2,100 or 2,200 jobs being lost in the population of 1.5 million in the greater Dublin area. If that happened here, the Taoiseach and every Minister would be out doing something about it. This is an awful blow to the areas where these workers live in Tralee, Killarney, Listowel and Killorglin.

The job losses follow other job losses such as the 130 jobs in Debenhams in Tralee and almost 200 jobs in Fexco in Killorglin and Cahersiveen. Aqua Dome Tralee is to remain closed until at least next April. This has been a massive attraction and is a serious loss to business in Tralee. The move to cut three race nights from the monthly calendar by the Irish Greyhound Board and relocate them to Cork and Limerick has hurt many dog owners and will certainly hurt business in Tralee. I support the request of Ken Tobin of Tralee Chamber Alliance that Kerry be separated from Cork city when it comes to economic development as they are and have always been two separate regions and should be treated as such. I ask the Government to set up an emergency jobs task force to address the jobs crisis in Kerry and ask the relevant Minister to come down to meet the workers and stakeholders in Tralee as soon as possible.

The Cahersiveen and Iveragh area has been devoid of any job creation for many years under successive Governments.

From Kells station through Cahersiveen right up around the Ring of Kerry to Sneem and Kenmare is now totally dependent on a bit of farming, fishing and tourism. When the youngsters go off to college, most never return as there are no jobs to come back to. The only thing the Government has brought to Cahersiveen is asylum seekers to the unfit-for-purpose Skellig Star hotel, where we are told food and water are now being rationed. The Kerry jobs situation has been exacerbated by the Green Party's role in the programme for Government. We will no longer have Shannon LNG providing natural gas, which was to create between 350 and 500 badly needed jobs in north Kerry, even though this company has already spent €70 million of its own money and was going to fund totally the project itself. We need gas for at least 30 more years.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of job losses and employment in Kerry. As a result of what has happened to the economy due to this pandemic, we have all seen a major increase in unemployment in recent months. Thankfully, it is falling, and people have seen that the number of people on the pandemic unemployment payment, which peaked at more than 600,000, is now below 300,000 and is still falling at a rate of approximately 20,000 to 30,000 per week, which is encouraging. In addition, more than 400,000 people are having their employment sustained through the Government's temporary wage subsidy scheme.

As for BorgWarner, the news of those job losses came as a terrible blow to the staff and to the town of Tralee. I have spoken to the IDA about this and have been in touch by conference call with the company to express my disappointment that there was no advance notice of this to any Government agency. The company explained to me that demand for its product is in terminal decline, which is unrelated to Covid, and that it does not see any future product line for the factory, so it has to close. It will close by the end of the year, although some people will remain on site until the second quarter of next year. I discussed the issue of redundancy and the need to make sure the workers get a good redundancy package. The company said that that would be put in place and that it will negotiate with the representatives on it. I also asked about the site because the company owns it and I would like to see a new company come in there and bring more employment back into Tralee. The company has agreed to work with the Government and the IDA to find either a new investor or a buyer for the site in order that we might replace some, if not all, of those jobs with new jobs for Tralee. That is what we are working on.

In addition to that, as is always the case, Government agencies and supports will click in. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection will make sure all the workers know their rights in respect of redundancy and welfare payments if they are losing their jobs. The education and training boards, the institutes of technology and so on will go in to make sure people are given a whole set of opportunities such as alternative employment, education and training and possible grants to set up businesses. All these things will be offered to the workers in order that they know their options and opportunities. This is separate from the fact that we will try to find an alternative investor for the plant. The job losses are really bad news not just for the workers affected but also for the impact on the local economy. I know it comes at a really awful time, when people are going into a labour market that is very difficult, but I assure the Deputy that the Government and its agencies will do everything we can to help the people who have lost their jobs and to find alternative employment for Tralee.

I thank the Tánaiste for his reply. I highlight as well that very recently we lost 45 jobs in Kenmare when Jam closed its outlet. In the tourism industry we have lost hundreds of jobs: bus drivers, pub workers and many others. I ask the Government to probe urgently the following possibility. The Tánaiste has said he is doing this, but I ask the Government to leave no stone unturned in getting BorgWarner or another company to use this very skilled workforce, with many years' experience, and the facility there in the production of some other components, such as ventilators to deal with the coronavirus or other needed products such as air-to-water pumps, which we are importing from Germany and Denmark at present. We really value our remaining employers, such as Liebherr, Munster Joinery and Harty's of Causeway, and all the other small employers that are vital to the economy of Kerry. Many of our manufacturing jobs have been lost over the years to eastern Europe and have never been replaced. I ask the Government to look at Kerry and put in place a new task force to deal with the jobs crisis in Kerry because we are on our knees and the county is really suffering.

The Deputy can be assured that the Government will do the best we can and work might and main to find an alternative employer or investor for the facility. It would be a shame to see it go unused. The company says it will work with us on this, but it would be a new company coming in and probably producing something different. I was talking to the Minister, Deputy Foley, and Deputy Griffin about this the other day. We are very keen to put Government resources behind Kerry and to make sure it gets its fair share of investment. In the past ten years the number of IDA jobs in County Kerry has increased by 48%, so it is going in very much the right direction. That might fall back a bit this year, but I think we will be able to make progress again in the years ahead. One thing that will be absolutely crucial for the county, as we all appreciate, is getting our tourism industry up and running again because Kerry is Ireland's premier county when it comes to tourism. This is why we took the decisions we took in the July stimulus package only last week to put in place a stay-and-spend scheme, which I hope will be useful to the tourism industry in Kerry from October onwards. We are also extending the wage subsidy scheme well into spring of next year and allowing those employers to take on seasonal workers who were not on the payroll in February. This was one of the big asks that employers had. It is therefore hoped we will start to see some of those jobs coming back.