Staff at Dublin People angry that wage support scheme was not used to save jobs
Staff at the Dublin People newspaper group are angry management has not used the Covid-19 wage support scheme to try to save their jobs.
That is according to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), which represents editorial staff at the titles, which are partly owned by the Celtic Media Group.
The publisher of the Northside and Southside People told staff at the weekend it plans to apply for liquidation.
The union says 17 workers face compulsory layoffs with the group offering only the minimum statutory redundancy payment.
Former editor Joe Lowry says the liquidation of the Northside and Southside People will be a huge loss to local media in the capital.
"It's a real shame because things are getting back and the economy was starting to get going again
"I never actually thought that it would go under. I thought it would diversify somehow - it would go online or there would be some other business model that they could get into."
Mr Lowry said the papers made their mark since first going to print 33 years ago this month.
"We were young. I was 18 or 19, others were 21 or 22. We were young and we didn't know and that was great.
"We went out and really pushed things. I used qualified privilege at a county council meeting to run a headline saying 'Taoiseach sitting on a goldmine' referring to Charlie Haughey's lands in Clonsealy because that is what someone said.
"None of the other nationals dared to do that."
