“It was necessary for an outside agency to move in, it happened to be the bank, Anglo Irish Bank as it was at the time, to find a way of keeping the group alive if it were possible to do so,” he said.IBRC spoke to community representatives on a number of occasions to explain the rationale for their strategy to rescue the companies, and “some of them argued back on the basis that Mr [Seán] Quinn was the only person who could run the business.
Mr Dukes praised the “extraordinarily courageous” management and staff at QIH and warned the border community around Derrlylin, Co Fermanagh and Cavan they need to be conscious of the “dangers that are there”. Mr Quinn said “these guys sacked me over three years ago” and he had not been involved in the company since then. The attack “just doesn’t make any sense, that’s not what moral individuals do to each other.”Mr Lunney, who is QIH’s chief operating officer, was abducted near his home in Derrylin as he returned from work at 6.40pm on Tuesday and his car was set on fire.
Some of his fingernails were pulled out, his face and neck slashed with a Stanley knife and his leg badly broken during the two-hour ordeal.