Liberty Chief Executive Tom McIlduff
THE chief executive of Liberty Insurance has told the Fermanagh Herald that ‘hundreds of jobs’ could be created by the transfer of operations of the business in Enniskillen to a third party.
While 270 jobs across Liberty in Ireland are to be cut, including 20 in Enniskillen, the company’s CEO is confident that the remaining jobs 210 will be safe when they are transferred to a third party, and said that several hundred could be created as a result of the move.
Last week, the company announced its intention to pull out of the British market resulting in big job losses in the South.
It hopes to find 20 voluntary redundancies in Enniskillen to facilitate the transfer of employees there to a third-party company, which would operate selling and servicing Liberty products and customers.
Liberty Insurance took over Quinn Insurance in 2011.
Tom McIlduff, chief executive of the company told the Fermanagh Herald that he was confident that the transferred jobs would be secure under a third party, which has yet to be announced.
Liberty Insurance will continue to own the building in Enniskillen, said to have capacity for over 800 staff.
“If we look at it from a local area in Enniskillen, our focus there was really to try to protect as many jobs as we could in that location and that’s why we’ve gone through a process to identify a series of providers, customer service providers, who can come in and take responsibility for the team that we have up there,” he said.
“There’s significant space for additional jobs and we needed to work with someone who would take that on, wanted to invest in Enniskillen and create hopefully hundreds of jobs in that location.”
Asked if, given that the jobs will be in the hands of a third party, he could guarantee their safety, he replied: “I think the key thing is what we’ve done is work with partners who we know are fully committed to Enniskillen.
“We put them through a thorough due diligence process to understand their commitment to the area; their commitment to bringing new jobs to the area. That was the key criteria in the people that we selected.”
Mr McIlduff admitted that the statement released to the media last week prompted a degree of certainty among staff, but sought to allay fears.
“I think this is an uncertain message at the moment and it’s difficult to talk about who the parties are because of where we are in the contractual negotiations but hopefully that uncertainty will be relatively short-lived and we’ll be able to bring them onside and let them introduce themselves. Once we get into that process then people will feel much more comfortable for their future in the new business that we transfer them to.”
On how the third party company will work, Mr McIlduff explained: “The products will still be Liberty, the employees will work for the third party but they’ll be selling our products and serving our customers under the Liberty banner.
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