The company's managing director, Anthony Dinan, told the Sunday Tribune that it would be "foolish if we didn't look at alternative ways of running our business".

He said that outsourcing was just one of a number of options before the group as it attempts to increase its margins to a similar level to those enjoyed by its rivals, Independent News & Media (IN&M), which owns 29.9% of this newspaper, and Johnston Press.

Dinan said this did not necessarily mean that TCH would opt to outsource the work but he admitted that IN&M's decision to introduce outsourcing at the Irish Independent, Evening Herald and Sunday Independent would put pressure on the group to follow suit.

He indicated that TCH expected little resistance from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) if it did adopt outsourcing.

"The NUJ has accepted the management is right and has accordingly voted in favour at the Independent, " he said.

The NUJ's Irish secretary, S�amus Dooley, called Dinan's remarks disingenuous.

"What was accepted by the chapel was a package where the company was intent on proceeding with outsourcing regardless. The vote was about the terms of that package and not the principle of outsourcing."

He said, however, that if TCH offered its members eight weeks' pay per year of service and 90 full-time jobs, as IN&M did as part of its package, it would "colour the views of our members".

When asked whether this reflected a contradiction in the NUJ's approach to outsourcing, Dooley said that "redundancies are always difficult to reject from a union's point of view. It's a balancing act. I'm not the first union official who has been opposing cuts and also fulfilling a crowd control role in terms of people wanting to take the package and leave."