The closure of Amann Industries in Tralee, and the removal of over 300 workers’ jobs to China and Eastern Europe demonstrates that private industry is not a sustainable solution to unemployment. This is particularly true now, as the world economic system continues to fail, generally. If the world of business is supposedly the arena that is going to provide a solution to the latest crisis of capitalism, why can’t it do so now?

The truth is that private enterprise provides jobs only as long as a maximum level of profitability is maintained for the owners and shareholders. Business, as business people will tell you, is not a social service.

In that case we now need the Irish state to step in and nationalise companies in difficulty, and preserve the jobs. If we can nationalise banks (at our expense) why cant we nationalise businesses? At the very least, we could inject a kind of Obama stimulus package to companies, in return for partial public ownership, with the state guaranteeing standards of employment and workers’ rights.

If high energy costs are a problem for industry, we also need the state to take back our energy resources, like the Corrib gas field, into public ownership. Then we could supply energy to companies as a service, stripped of the higher price necessitated by private energy companies’ quest for profits.

With over 6000 people on the Unemployment Live Register in the Tralee area, we certainly need a different kind of solution to job creation and job sustainability.