Budget Travel Company News

Swedish bosses set up secret company as they sack Irish workforce

30 November 2009: Swedish bosses at collapsed Budget Travel set up a secret shell company in Dublin just two days before they started sacking their Irish workforce, the TSSA travel union revealed today.

The new company, Budget Tours Ltd, was set up three months ago on August 12. Forty eight hours later, 95 staff at Budget Travel were told they were being fired with the closure of 14 shops.

Last week, Andri Ingolfsson, owner of the firm's Malmo based parent company, Primera Travel, announced the closure of the rest of the Irish firm with the loss of another 170 jobs and the immediate closure of another 17 shops.

TSSA leader Gerry Doherty today called for an immediate investigation into the collapse of the Irish firm and the secret setting up of the new firm by Mr Ingolfsson and three Irish executives from Budget Travel.

He said that all monies owed by Irish authorities to the Scandanavian travel group should be frozen while that investigation is carried out by the Department for Finance.

"This news raises serious questions about the conduct of Budget Travel and Primera Travel while they talked about saving some of their shops over the past three months.

"While they were publicly dismantling Budget Travel, they were privately setting up another company which they somehow failed to tell us about.

"Were they always planning to leave by the back door while we were watching the front door?

"Last week Mr Ingolfsson portrayed himself as Pontius Pilate, reluctantly washing his hands of Ireland because the Aviation Commission was beng unreasonable in asking his travel group in Malmo to guarantee his debts in Ireland.

"Well after this latest news, the staff he sacked without any money a month before Christmas may well regard him as Judas, the man who betrayed them for thirty pieces of silver."

Primera Travel has a 11 million euro bond lodged with the Aviation Commission. It is also due a 60% state rebate from the redundancy payments it made to the 95 staff sacked at the beginnng of October.

"No monies should be paid over to Primera in Sweden before the dismissed staff and creditors in Ireland are looked after," added the union general secretary.

Apart from Mr Ingolfsson, the three other directors at Budget Tours are three former directors at Budget Travel, Eileen O'Sullivan, Elizabeth Herzens and Eugene Cochrane, former MD who walked away with a reported pay off over over 200,000 euros.

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