Workers stage protest outside church service

Jeff Wright, a pastor at Green Pastures church who owns a controlling stake in the company which went into administration last week with the loss of 1,200 jobs, addressed the congregation inside.

Mr Wright admitted that a lot of former workers were afraid and scared about the future and said negotiations to save the company were at a delicate stage.

“I won’t jeopardise the future so I can look good.”

He received a standing round of applause in the church.

Green Pastures is a religious charity and received £15 million in donations from the Co Antrim firm when it was profitable.

The decision to spend company dividends on the evangelical church has been criticised by some former workers and some held banners to that effect yesterday.

Mr Wright said: “I am so sorry that this church has to go through what they went through, I never thought this would happen.”

He said he had fought to build Wrightbus into a world-class entity through crisis after crisis and maintained its reputation for quality and integrity.

He said his own son – the fourth generation of the Wright family – had lost his inheritance along with his sisters and their children along with the hundreds of men he had worked, played football and prayed with.

Mr Wright said an evangelical trust held a third of shares in the company. He disclosed that £20 million of reserves had been spent on the company over the last year in an effort to keep it in operation until a buyer could be found.

After the service, company founder William Wright met some of the men standing outside and said: “I am sorry folks, hopefully everything will work out.”

He received a round of applause.

Among those protesting outside was William Wright’s granddaughter, Fiona Knowles, who said: “Our family has been destroyed by this and it could have been avoided.

“It is hard to watch, when you watch your granda who has built this place up since he was 16, to have it destroyed, it is very hard to watch.”

Andrew French, 34, from Ahoghill, worked at the plant for 18 years. His father spent 43 years there and his sister was also an employee.

The father of two said: “This is all I know, I have been in here since I left school. Eighteen years service for what, statutory redundancy which you cannot get for 10 weeks? It is an awful situation to be in.”