250 jobs saved as Mothercare Ireland exits examinership

More than 250 jobs have been saved after retailer Mothercare Ireland confirmed it had successfully exited examinership.

The company has said it will continue to trade at 15 stores nationwide but confirmed it is to close three shops - two in Dublin and one in Limerick - where approximately 26 people are employed.

Mothercare Ireland is a franchise of Mothercare UK and has traded here for 23 years. It is the country’s largest maternity, baby, nursery and children’s clothes retailer.

The group sought examinership in late July in a bid to restructure the business and secure the long-term future of the company on the back of what it said were unsustainable rents.

Speaking today, Mothercare Ireland said the restructure had led to a 30 per cent rent reduction across the group’s portfolio.

As part of the restructure plan the company will close stores in Blackrock and Jervis Street in Dublin and at Cruises Street in Limerick in early 2016. Mothercare said it was in consultation with staff impacted by the decision and added it hoped to redeploy staff across the group's existing stores in Dublin and Limerick.

Mothercare Ireland owner David Ward, who established the group in 1992 after previously running the BHS, Habitat and Mothercare businesses here for the Storehouse Group, is also to invest €750,000 into the business as part of the plan.

Examinership is a corporate rescue mechanism that allows insolvent companies that have a reasonable prospect of survival to seek court protection from creditors. The success rate of examinerships - where the company moves through the process and emerges on the other side to continue to trade - stands high at 90 per cent for 2014.

Mothercare traded as normal during the examinership process, with staff and suppliers continuing to be paid and all gift cards and family card points honoured.

Store operations director Jonathan Ward welcomed the decision of the High Court to approve the survival scheme for the company.

“It’s a great sense of relief and we’re just looking to the future now, he said.

“I think we’ve got a cost base that the business can grow on again now. Everything we were doing was about managing costs effectively and the one cost we couldn’t manage was our rents so we’ve been able to reduce that and along with the fresh investment in the business we’ll be able to grow the business.

Mr Ward said that having exited examinership the group would be looking at store refurbishments and improvements across its entire operation, which will include faster checkouts, and the introduction of e-receipts and in-store tablets