A sit-in at Iceland in Waterford City is now on its second day. Workers were given 30 minutes' notice yesterday evening that the store would close and their jobs would be lost.
It stems from June of this year when an examiner was appointed to the company to oversee its financial operations. It is understood the company is now insolvent and owes monies in the region of 36 million euro.
Michael Walsh has been working in the store for over 7 years and spoke to WLR this morning.
"It's not more so the job it's the team that you work with. Yesterday was an unprecedented day for us as we had an inkling that something was going on. Other shops around us closed such as Gorey, Wexford, and Clonmel.
"Having to live through the closure of Waterford Crystal it's absolutely sickening, Waterford Crystal was given notice, yesterday we were given 30 minutes notice to shut the shop.
"We would like to thank all our customers for their support and if they could offer us more that would be great. We would like to see it until the bitter end and get exactly what we are due which would be our holidays, monies owed, as well as our redundancies."
Issues began to stem when the company was appointed an examiner to oversee the financial stability of the company by the High Court.
Joe Walsh, of JW Accountants, was appointed an interim examiner to Metron, the parent company of Iceland in June when the court was told the company was insolvent and unable to pay debts of about €36 million.
Speaking to WLR News outside the store last night, SIPTU official Mark Flynn says the staff will not be leaving any time soon.
"Iceland has gone into examinership and has been for the past couple of months, but this store here in Waterford was given 30 minutes' notice of closure and they were told to vacate the premises. The colleagues are not willing to do that at the moment because they saw what happened to their colleagues in Clonmel and other stores around the country. These people are still waiting on statutory redundancy forms to be filled as they have not received them."
For your latest Waterford News and Sport, click here.
