Senator calls for Aviva Stadium name to be dropped

THE
Aviva Stadium should be called by its original name in light of the insurance
company’s handling of the announcement of recent job losses, it has been
suggested.

Senator
Catherine Noone (FG) has called on members of the public to refer to the
sporting ground as the Lansdowne Road stadium, as it was previously known.

“The Irish people invested in the rebuilding
of the stadium. We should take back the name. I am not comfortable with such an
iconic location in Irish sport being named after an international insurance
conglomerate.

?

Estimated
restructuring costs of the new stadium were over

?¬191 million of the estimated total was
allocated through supports provided by Dublin City Council and the Department
of Transport, Tourism and Sport.

Aviva became one of the highest profile insurance
firms in the country after it paid an estimated

?¬40 million for the naming
rights at Lansdowne Road.

The
deal was done when the company outbid other rivals to secure the naming rights
for what was to become known as Aviva Stadium.

The
insurance giant recently announced that it would halve its workforce in Ireland
over the next two years.

The
cost-cutting exercise will see 950 redundancies from the Irish division of the
company.

It
is expected that the job cuts will be implemented in the next six months.

The
redundancies are expected to involve 770 from Aviva Ireland and 180 jobs from
Aviva Europe, which is based in Ireland.

Aviva
employs 1,770 people in Dublin, Cork and Galway and has built up a customer
base of 1.3 million people.

A
spokesperson for Aviva Stadium said people have a tendency to honour contracts
when they are in place, regardless of public opinion.

?

Last
week Unite members at Aviva voted by a greater than 90 per cent majority to
take industrial action if jobs are threatened or relocation measures commenced
before agreement has been reached with staff.