Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)

I call on the Leader to use his good offices to contact the Minister for Finance to ask him, while respecting the independence of Mr. Elderfield and his office, to ask the regulator to speed up the process of assessing the figures that have been put before him by the joint administrators of Quinn Insurance Limited in order to re-open the UK market to Quinn Insurance. Some 55% of Quinn Insurance business is UK-based - in Britain and Northern Ireland. Some 95% of the workforce of Quinn Insurance linked to that business is based in this country. It is a matter of the gravest urgency that the regulator stops the drip feed of a bit now and a bit again. He needs to knuckle down to it and make his decision based on the figures the joint administrators have put before him, which show that 90% of the insurance the company was writing in the UK was profitable. That is a fact.

It was unfair of the regulator to handcuff the administrators whose job is to put, by way of legislation, Quinn Insurance back on a sound financial footing. How in the name of God can one put a business back on a sound financial footing when the regulator has taken away its ability to write 55% of its business? That does not make sense.

I call on the Leader to use his good offices to put at ease the minds of not only the 800 employees of Quinn Insurance who are reported in today's newspapers to be in danger of losing their jobs over the next 12 months but to put at ease the minds of its 2,800 employees and their families by asking the Minister to request the regulator to stop the drip feed and let the company write the profitable end of its UK business with immediate effect.