THE GOVERNMENT will do all in its power to help redundant Quinn Insurance workers find new jobs, Minister for Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe said.
A co-ordinated emergency response by the Government would be activated immediately, he said, involving Enterprise Ireland, Fás, IDA Ireland, relevant county enterprise boards, the Department of Social Protection and his own department. In the coming days, Mr O’Keeffe said he would appoint a chair to this inter-agency team.
Dedicated information centres staffed by the agencies were being established in Cavan, Navan and Blanchardstown where briefing sessions would be run to outline the supports available.
Describing the announcement as “devastating for the workers and their families”, he pledged the Government would “do all in our power to help those individuals who lose their jobs to find new ones”.
The Government confirmed to the UK authorities that no policyholders – including those in the UK – would be put at risk by the company being in administration. Mr O’Keeffe said, if necessary, the Minister for Finance would “provide funds to support the administration through the insurance compensation fund”.
Minister for Agriculture and Cavan-Monaghan TD Brendan Smith said it was “a very bleak day” for the company and its employees. He wanted to assure those directly affected that “the Government and its agencies will be offering a comprehensive range of supports to assist them at this difficult time and in particular to work towards the protection of the maximum number of jobs”.
Fine Gael’s enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar said every effort must be made to find a “committed owner” for Quinn Insurance to safeguard the maximum number of jobs at the company.
“Given that the current administrator is determined to make the company profitable again by shrinking its workforce and pulling out of unprofitable markets, employees would benefit from finding a new owner who is committed to operating the company as a going concern.
“If a new investor were to take over Quinn Insurance as a going concern, it would immediately come out of administration and it would then be open to the new owner to keep the less-profitable markets open and save more jobs. Anglo-Irish Bank, which is a creditor of Quinn, is one option but more than 40 others have been in touch with the administrator,” Mr Varadkar said.
Labour’s finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said Quinn workers were “the innocent victims” of the turmoil in the international financial markets. They are victims in particular of the dramatic collapse of Anglo exacerbated by the fact the owner of Quinn Group and Quinn Insurance lost out so spectacularly with his €3 billion gamble on shares in the failed bank.”
She said the regulator had a job to do in establishing a “stronger, more transparent regulatory framework”.
Speaking before the redundancy announcement, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the company had a “viable future”. The Government would “commit the State agencies in trying to assist them in any way we can for the future”.
In response to criticisms of the Government’s handling of the affair through the Financial Regulator, Mr Cowen said: “This is a regulated industry . . . There are requirements that are decided upon by an independent regulator.
“This is a business that has a viable future and we need to work with the administrator appointed by the court and with the company to try and help as much as we possibly can to ensure we move on to a state of development for the company in a more sustainable place than it is at the moment.”