The Financial Regulator has decided to allow Quinn Insurance to resume taking motor insurance business in the North and Britain. The regulator had placed severe restrictions on the company's business in the UK.
But the decision is understood to be unlikely to prevent the company's joint administrators from going ahead with plans to cut 900 to 1,000 jobs. Staff are due to be briefed on details of these plans tomorrow.
The regulator said the UK decision had been made after detailed discussions with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK and joint administrators of Quinn Insurance.
Quinn Insurance welcomed the move, but said the approval included 'significant pricing changes' which it believed would lead to significantly lower volumes than were previously written by the company in the UK motor market.
Earlier, representatives of Quinn Insurance employees told the Oireachtas Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade & Employment that it was 'completely outrageous' that workers learned of possible redundancies at the company through the media.
Workers' representatives told the committee they had a solution to the difficulties faced by Quinn Insurance. They want the company to be allowed to resume all of its UK market activities, which they say is the only way of preventing a disastrous impact on the Irish economy.
The current restructuring of Quinn Insurance relates primarily to its businesses in the UK, many of which have been unprofitable. But most of the redundancies the administrators are seeking would be in the Republic, from where much of the UK business is handled.
The five members of the workers' action group told the committee that Quinn Insurance was losing 2,000 of its UK customers a day - adding that the company was itching to restart all its UK business, and was well equipped to do so.
