Quinn staff claim 1,000 jobs at risk

More than 1,000 jobs could be at risk at Quinn Insurance across Ireland and the UK as a result of the continued limitation of its operations in the UK, workers said today.

The Financial Regulator announced on Wednesday that it would allow Quinn to write new business for provisional licence drivers in the UK, but staff at Quinn said that only accounts for about 10 per cent of its business.

Employees today called on the regulator to make a decision on the rest of the UK business.

"The employees are extremely frustrated at the indecision of the regulator. Where we as a group of employees totally accept his independence, we can't understand why a decision can't be made," said Brian Storey, a member of the Quinn Insurance employee committee.

"Only allowed to do 10 per cent is now meaning that we're exporting these jobs out of Ireland. These jobs are going to be lost from Ireland now and they're probably never going to return."

He said the administrator was seeking further lines of business to be written in the UK but there had been no response from the regulator. Delaying the reopening of these lines of business was putting more jobs at risk, he said.

"We've got many commercial customers who have been with us 10 or 12 years, never had a claim, extremely profitable business, yet we're being banned from writing that.

"When these renewals come up and these customers have to renew someone else, we've lost them,. They have to have their insurance, and even if we were allowed back as every day goes by we won't have them back for a minimum of a year," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.

A spokeswoman for the regulator said it would continue to review the business proposals from the administrator for the UK business with a view to phased reopening of certain business lines based on analysis.

Local TDs called on the regulator to act swiftly. TDs Seymour Crawford and Frank Feighan, along with Senator Joe O'Reilly, said it was vital to take the necessary steps to save as many jobs as possible.

"We still believe there is room for the Government to intervene in order to save as many jobs as it can," they said in a joint statement.

"While it is encouraging to see the UK market being opened again to Quinn Insurance for the purpose of selling insurance to provisional licence holders, it is difficult to understand why more products have still not been sanctioned. UK drivers are left with the strange situation where first-time learner drivers can obtain insurance, but anyone seeking to renew their insurance cannot."