CAVAN:THE NEWS of job losses and the possible sell-off of Quinn Insurance was greeted with dejection and frustration by staff in Cavan.
They braced themselves for the worst and as several of the employees left the briefing, the news emerged over 220 voluntary redundancies were being sought with 121 of the jobs to go within three months.
One distressed female employee of Quinn Insurance, who asked not to be named, said : “The whole situation is heartbreaking. This upsets our whole lives and our families. We don’t know what to do after this. There’s no chance of any other job like this. The bottom line is that our jobs are gone.”
Other employees said, rather than emigrating, they intended to explore options for new jobs in the region in the wake of accepting a voluntary redundancy package.
One male staff member said: “The future is now very bleak. Once the company is sold there is no guarantee that we will have any jobs . . . We don’t seem to have much option but to take the redundancy offer.”
Asked about their continued loyalty to Seán Quinn in the wake of his Anglo Irish Bank “gamble”, several workers said they still were “supportive” of Mr Quinn.
One worker castigated the Government for failing to take necessary measures to “save” Quinn Insurance Limited.
“We have heard nothing from the Taoiseach Mr Cowen or Minister Lenihan, who should have both taken a different approach towards the action by the financial regulator before disrupting the company’s insurance business.”
Noreen Sudbury, a Cavan-based employee, described the sell-off as a “terrible blow for everyone, especially the staff who gave everything, in the interests of the Quinn Group”.
Last night, Kevin Sherry of Enterprise Ireland, who met a number of the the Quinn Group employees in Cavan, said it was “a very dark day” for all of them.
He assured the workers facing redundancy Enterprise Ireland would do everything possible to help in the face of the grim prospects facing many of the workers at the firm.
A warning of “wholesale redundancies” throughout Cavan town, and in the region generally, was predicted last night by the outgoing chairman of Cavan chamber of commerce, Eamon McDwyer.
“Make no mistake about it, the 900 job losses in the Quinn Group will result in a lot of other layoffs in business as a result of what has happened – it is a terrible blow for the area.”