DIRECTORS of the Three Lakes Hotel in Killarney have announced plans to wind up the trading company, saying that pickets placed on the hotel made it impossible to trade". The hotel has been closed since April 2nd.
Redundancy payments have been made to the 17 employees, who are members of SIPTU. Other creditors are expected to be fully paid in the voluntary group of Shawcove, the registered company for the 71 bedroom hotel in centre of Killarney.
The hotel was acquired for £3.4 million in February by Mr and Mrs Ring and, Mr and Mrs O Donoghue, who also own the Killarney Towers Hotel. In their statement, the directors referred to "a dispute with the previous owners of the hotel". This, dispute,"had been so seriously escalated by the placing of pickets on the hotel that it had proved impossible to trade", they maintained.
However, a local SIPTU official, Mr Patsy Cronin, insisted that the union never had a dispute with the previous owners. "We had a dispute with the new owners who refused to meet with us," he said.
A spokesman for the hotel's owners confirmed that they had declined to meet the unions. "They discussed future plans with the staff directly. Long term proposals had been outlined to staff," he said.
The directors said they felt they had "no option but to proceed to the orderly winding up of the hotel company". They said that this year's business was now lost and could not be recovered.
They had carried out "a very successful marketing and sales programme overseas which had resulted in substantial bookings for the coming year", they said. Losses in the September 1996 to February 1997 period, before the takeover, were £325,000, they said.
Mr Cronin said the dispute would continue. The union was taking legal advice, he said. Local sources speculated that The Three Lakes building could now be converted into apartments or developed for other uses.
