Anglo Irish Bank HQ goes from bust to... a total lack of cash

Work is nearing completion on the building originally intended to be Anglo Irish Bank’s gleaming Dublin headquarters - and Central Bank staff will soon be filling it.

Some staff are already on site, but most of the 1,459 work stations are silent and free of clutter, with the office chairs still in bubble wrap, when the bank took the media on a tour of the building on North Wall Quay.

The roof garden, with its views of Dublin Port to the east and the city rooftops to the west, remains muddy and unplanted.

There are eight floors above ground and two below, 11 lifts, 300 bicycle spaces, 97 car parking spaces and 30 showers as well as multiple exposed staircases that seem to flow through the building in a manner suggestive of an Escher etching.

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The meeting rooms and “breakout spaces” are all chrome and glass, while the funky green chairs would not be out of place in the cafeteria of the Starship Enterprise.

The colour of the furniture will be blue and green, designed to represent the colours of the Irish landscape.

Criminals take note

Bank robbers beware though: one thing that will not be found in this particular building is money.

It is a cashless facility and all canteen transactions will rely on plastic staff cards.

"There will be no cash-in-transit vans or no vaults or anything like that," said Paul Molumby, the bank's director of currency and corporate service and one of the staff members leading the tour.

“It is a building with no money - but I wouldn’t want us to be perceived as a bank with no money. When the Central Bank says ‘let there be money’ there is money.”

Mr Molumby took reporters on a tour of the restaurant. It has has breakout spaces for teams who want to “come together for meetings during their lunch hours or during the morning, so we cordoned off a part of the restaurant with glass doors and you just bring your food in there”.