Quinn workers say core business remains profitable

WORKERS’ REPRESENTATIVES from Quinn Insurance yesterday claimed planned redundancies were “completely unnecessary”, arguing that its core business remained profitable.

Addressing the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise yesterday, they also expressed anger at finding out through the media that up to 800 staff may be made redundant as part of a restructuring plan to address the company’s insolvency issues.

The joint administrators appointed to the insurer last month are expected to brief employees on their downsizing plan today.

Members of the insurer’s employee action committee said yesterday the insurer was losing up to 2,000 customers a day because of the restrictions imposed by the Financial Regulator on its ability to write and renew business in the UK.

The insurer was being forced to turn away business which could help save jobs, they said.

Workers’ representative Mona Bermingham said the fact that news of redundancies emerged first in the media “crystalised” what had been happening for the last four weeks. “We’re not being told anything. It’s a blatant disregard for employees.”

She said while staff respected the regulator’s motives in addressing the company’s solvency issues, they questioned his decision to impose a “blanket ban” on the insurer’s UK market, which had put “hundreds of jobs unnecessarily at risk”.

She said the UK operations, which account for 55 per cent of the insurer’s 1.3 million customers, could have been kept open, “with segments closed if and when they were proven to be unprofitable, to safeguard as many jobs as possible”.

“No one is now saying the regulator was heavy-handed in questioning the solvency margins. What we are questioning here is the procedure he followed. It is our understanding that what Seán Quinn and the Quinn Group asked for was time, not money.

“I’m probably out of turn saying this, but it is time that has been granted to VHI over and over again in relation to similar issues, and there is a certain hypocrisy and double standard in the way Quinn Insurance is being treated.”

Her colleague Daragh O’Neill said: “The only way to stop this disastrous impact on Ireland’s economy is by the immediate lifting of the ban on the Northern Ireland and UK business.”

Fianna Fáil TD for Cork Ned O’Keeffe asked if solvency levels for insurers in others EU countries were as strict as they were in the Republic, suggesting the country was moving from “one daft extreme to another” in terms of regulation.

Quinn workers’ representative Joe Lynch said average solvency levels across the EU were significantly lower than those required by Irish regulations.