The Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Sir Reg Empey, cut short a Northern Ireland executive trade mission to the US yesterday to tackle the ongoing crisis at Harland & Wolff.

Sir Reg flew back from Denver a day earlier than expected and is seeking talks this weekend with the Harland & Wolff management and major shareholder Mr Fred Olsen of Olsen Energy.

Speaking on Radio Ulster last night, Sir Reg said Harland & Wolff was a private company but the UK government had been trying to be as helpful and innovative as possible.

"The government is concerned by the fact that company made it clear in its statement yesterday that there are going to be substantial redundancies," said Sir Reg.

"We have to react to that."

"My concern is that there are a large number of families who this weekend will be sitting at home and they aren't going to know whether they will have a wage packet in a month or two."

On Thursday evening the shipyard warned that a "substantial reduction" in the workforce was inevitable because of the financial difficulties confronting the company.

The company has blamed Global Marine's failure to pay a £23 million sterling delivery instalment for the Glomar Jack Ryan for putting the future of the yard at risk.

But the yard faces an order book crisis and has not yet been able to sign a contract to confirm two major orders which it announced earlier this year.

Mr Les Royle, chief executive officer of Luxus Holdings, which has signed a letter of intent with Harland & Wolff for a $300 million cruiser contract, said last night that negotiations on a financial package to conclude the deal were still at a "preliminary stage".

It is understood there is only enough work for some 500 workers at the yard out of a total of some 1,200. A decision on the size of a redundancy plan at the yard is likely to made by management early next week.

A delegation of Belfast city councillors led by Lord Mayor, Mr Sammy Rodgers, yesterday met with management to discuss the level of redundancies.

Councillors at the meeting were told no final decision had been made on the number of redundancies and local management was seeking to limit the damage. However, the yard is understood to be sustaining losses of more than £2 million every month.

However, Sir Reg Empey yesterday rejected the suggestion that the Northern Irish Executive should look towards high technology companies if Harland & Wolff could not compete for orders.

He said there was long term potential in the shipping market and Northern Ireland needed a balanced economy.