The Irish Bank Officials Association (IBOA) has called for the appointment of worker directors to the boards of AIB and Bank of Ireland.

Speaking at the organisation's weekend biennial delegate conference, Mr Larry Broderick, general secretary, said the appointment of worker directors would ensure "industrial democracy" in the two major banks and would also serve to protect the interests of customers.

Mr Broderick said the association was actively pursuing strategies to see what mechanisms were available for employees to use their shareholdings to seek representation at board level.

He said the two banks' directors seemed to be unaware of, or indifferent to, the concerns staff had in relation to their jobs against a background of major change in the financial services sector.

The boards of both banks have "lost the plot", he said, focusing on "merger frenzies" and cost-cutting exercises at the expense of providing good quality service to customers at reasonable prices.

He said staff and customers were almost always the last to be informed of decisions made at board level that directly affected them. Mr Broderick said worker directors could contribute an employee view to the question of where the banks were going. He said staff were concerned that Irish banks would replicate what had happened in the UK, with cost-cutting and mergers. If this occurred there was "no way Irish banks will succeed in going forward", he said.

The conference debated the outsourcing of work by banks and heard that in the UK, Barclays Bank had decided against outsourcing for security reasons.

The meeting expressed support for IT staff at the Bank of Ireland, who have threatened industrial action over the bank's outsourcing deal with Hewlett Packard.