Furlough scheme ‘offers a lifeline to many businesses’
A COUNTY Derry company has been protecting health care workers by supplying high-end protective gear for intensive care units during the COVID-19 crisis.
Seating Matters, based outside Ballykelly, has been able to use the Government’s furlough scheme to protect about a quarter of its 50-strong workforce, while also helping provide box shields to protect healthcare workers while they are ventilating patients
The family-owned company has specialised in creating chairs to provide comfort, postural support, pressure management and improve quality of life for disabled adults and children since 2008.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, however, the company has teamed up with medical experts and designers to create the box shields.
Managing director Martin Tierney said: “We have been making clinical therapeutic chairs for hospitals and we are very close to the front line in that respect because a lot of our chairs are being used in intensive care and in COVID wards.”
Seating Matters was established by Martin’s mother Martina, an occupational therapist who had identified a global demand for therapeutic chairs.
It now has 50 staff but Mr Tierney said it had to furlough a quarter of its staff. He said the government furlough scheme was a lifeline for many businesses. Mr Tierney said: “I’m grateful that we can keep moving forward because there are a lot of places that are stopped altogether. I’m just grateful that we are not in that boat.” The firm has strict social distancing and changed an office entrance in order to safeguard staff against coronavirus infection.