Forgotten Town?

For those of us living in Wexford town in the 1980's there was a general sense that we were in a 'forgotten town'. There was widespread unemployment and opportunities were rare. Whenever new jobs presented themselves employers were usually swamped with applications and canvassing was rife. That was the 80's and the country that we live in now is vastly different to what it was a generation ago. I have just spent the weekend in Wexford visiting family and everyday life now in the town is unrecognizable to what it was like in the doom and gloom of the 1980's. Or is it?

To the naked eye it would appear that there is a town in the south-east with a bustling economy. But if you look closer you will see a town that has been abandoned. There may be a cornucopia of delights on offer in the restaurants and bars in the town but the industrial heart of the town is dying. Whereas many counties, including Tipperary, have lost and gained companies in the ebb and flow of economic life it appears that Wexford has continued to lose valuable jobs only for them to be replaced (in a fanfare no less!) by lower paying less skilled jobs.

It hit home with me when I saw that parts of the industrial estate, a 1970's initiative, were being redeveloped as the second phase of a retail park. Waterford has multinational companies such as IVAX, Genzyme, Glaxo and others. Tipperary has Johnson &Johnson, Boston Scientific, Abbott, Stada, Merck, Taro and many others, Wicklow has Takeda, Servier, Dell and Schering to name but a few. Wexford on the other hand has Waters, PFPC, ABS Pumps, Carl Zeiss and few others. The first two mentioned came to the town in the last 15 years, the latter two have been there since the early 1970's. They are the main employers in the county. I can't help but feel that the IDA or whoever is responsible for sourcing new businesses for this country has looked at places like Kilkenny and Wexford and decreed that they are tourist towns that don't need industries whilst judging Tipperary to be the opposite.

Colm O'Gorman, the activist, whilst running his ill fated general election campaign last year highlighted that the average County Wexford worker has the lowest take home pay in the country. That's because of the lack of high paying roles in the pharmaceutical and medical device sector. It seems foolish to me that there are huge shortages of staff in certain parts of the country because of the concentration of companies therein whilst a place with excellent transport links and a highly educated workforce such as that in County Wexford has but the bare minimum granted to it in the IDA lottery. It's an issue that has burned at me for quite a while and I'd be interested in your comments on it. Of course there are other areas in a similar situation. Some may argue that Kilkenny is in an infinitely worse situation. As they used to say on the exam paper – Discuss.