SEANAD REPORT:CHEQUES HAD been issued last Friday to small businesses supplying Superquinn by people who knew they would never be cashed, John Whelan (Lab) claimed.
Many producers around the country had been left severely out of pocket due to the closure of the supermarket chain and its subsequent buy-out. Estimates of losses ranged from €28 million to up to €100 million.
Calling on Seanad leader Maurice Cummins (FG) to urgently raise this matter with Minister for Enterprise Richard Bruton, Mr Whelan said there would be more jobs lost this week “in what I believe was sharp practice and shoddy work . . .
“This was a planned close-down . . . 90 days’ credit was squeezed out of these small producers. I understand from talking to them directly that some of them are owed anything from €35,000 up to amounts ranging into the millions.
“They cannot sustain that.”
If this kind of sharp practice continued, more small Irish producers and companies would be unable to sustain the impact in terms of their cash flow, “and it’s wrong, because cheques were issued to these businesses on Friday by people who knew they would never be cashed,” added Mr Whelan.
Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn said he hoped the provision of a greater pluralistic choice of places of education at primary and secondary level would enable people to assert their own value system “without apology and for others to be able to find a place where they feel comfortable too”.
