BLANCHARDSTOWN:THE ANNOUNCEMENT that 301 redundancies are to be sought at Quinn Insurance's Blanchardstown facility was met with silence by the majority of the 800-plus employees when they were briefed at 3.30pm yesterday.
“There was silence. Just pure silence,” employee Emma Costello said. “You could see a couple of people welling up. When you’re told face to face, I had to actually hold back to stop crying.
“You’re so used to coming to a place, you get good at your job, and now I’ll have to start off in a new job on probation. That’s if I can find a job.”
“People’s jaws just dropped,” said Kevin McNamee. “I think it’s just shock at the moment. I don’t think it’s hit people yet. They’re not going to realise until people actually start getting made redundant.”
Yesterday’s announcement came three years to the day after Derek Casey began working with the company. He said the news was “devastating”.
“You hear speculation in the papers, but when the grim reality is staring you in the face it’s hard to take on board,” he said.
“There was a feeling of frustration, I think primarily at the Financial Regulator, in the delay in how drawn out this process has been . . . We’ve suffered a financial loss in the UK I think of about €46 million. We’re wondering now had this decision been made sooner, would there still be this amount of jobs that had to be lost?”
Most employees had found out about the imminent redundancies through the media on Thursday and there was some anger among staff who felt they should have been informed beforehand.
“I think everyone’s a bit annoyed that it came out in the media yesterday before we were told,” Sinéad Egan said.
“We always get told at the very last minute what’s going on . . . we had to find out through the media that there’s redundancies,” Michael Choi said.
Mr Choi, from Blanchardstown, said the job losses would have a major impact on the area.
“It’s not just 300 people that are being affected. There’s service providers . . . there’s garages that need to be paid.”
“It’s a big shock,” Arnaud Bouchaud said, adding that the news that the UK market would be reopened to Quinn Insurance yesterday had prompted employees to hope that there would be fewer redundancies as a result.
“I think people have just lost faith in what’s going on with the Government, with the Financial Regulator, with the administrators . . . but even with the Quinn family. We feel that we have been let down by everybody,” he said.
There was support overall for Seán Quinn among the employees.
“I think it’s indisputable the amount of respect there is for the man for having such success and supplying so many jobs to the country as a whole,” Mr Casey said.
He added that Mr Quinn had released a statement expressing his regret to staff.
“He’s with us and he’s equally devastated at the amount of losses that are being suffered.”