Cowen assurance to Halifax customers

Bank of Scotland Ireland customers would not be affected by the closure of its Irish Halifax operation, Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil.

He was answering Opposition leaders’ questions in the House this afternoon, following the announcement of the lost of 750 jobs at the company.

“This decision should not affect other players in the market, and I have been assured that all customers of Bank of Scotland Ireland will be looked after and will not be disadvantaged by the changes,’’ he added.

Mr Cowen said he regretted that the workers involved would lose their jobs and he understood that redundancy terms would be offered.

“As part of a bank restructuring worldwide, with institutions pulling back from markets which are not profitable for them, I am pleased that a substantial part of the business of Bank of Ireland Scotland will remain…with 850 jobs remaining,’’ he added.

On the loss of 175 jobs at the Boston Scientific plant in Galway, Mr Cowen said that it was against a background where the company continued to employ 3,000 people.

“It has a large number of temporary employees to facilitate a ramp-up, ramp-down process as volumes dictate,’’ he added.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said that almost 1,000 jobs had been lost in two days on top of the 436,000 people already out of work.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said that the job losses at Bank of Scotland Ireland was devastating news for the people involved.

The Irish taxpayer, he added, had to write the biggest ever cheque of €54 billion in respect of Nama.

The proposition being put by the Government was that if a huge risk was taken by relieving the banks of their loans in property deals, credit would flow to Irish business in return.

The Taoiseach, said Mr Kenny, had said himself that his sole motivation in setting up the controversial agency was to get credit flowing into the economy.

He added that Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan had promised “a wall of cash from Nama’’ to help restore the credit flow to get the economy growing again.

“This is in complete contrast to the meeting that was held with the IMF…which states that the IMF do not believe that Nama will result in significant increase in bank lending in Ireland,’’ Mr Kenny added.

Mr Cowen insisted that the IMF supported the establishment of Nama.

“The suggestion that the IMF was not in favour of the establishment of Nama, or, indeed, that we could proceed without a Nama, is not correct,’’ he added.

Mr Gilmore said that that the biggest and most urgent issue facing the State was to get the economy repaired and get people back to work.

He added that an innovation task force had yet to report. Another idea was the establishment of an international content services centre.

Mr Cowen said that the task force had its penultimate meeting last week and a report was likely by the end of this month.

He added that the international content services centre would work on through the digital hub in association with the IDA.

“It is part of a number of projects to identify new areas, whether it is internet technologies, international training services, the green clean tech area, the food industry,’’ he added.

Mr Cowen said that while it was expected unemployment would peak this year, jobs would also be created.

There was no doubt, he added, that the public finance situation, which the Government was bringing forward, was a prerequisite to ensuring that they got more jobs into the economy.