Tánaiste tight-lipped about forced redundancies

BANK JOBS:TÁNAISTE EAMON Gilmore declined to speculate on whether there might be enforced redundancies at Allied Irish Banks.

He was replying to Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary, who said the bank was stating it would seek enforced redundancies if the 2,500 job losses could not be achieved voluntarily.

Mr Gilmore said everybody understood restructuring was required in the banking sector. “On a day like today, I do not want to get into where the fault lies for what happened in the sector,’’ he added. “That is a matter for another day.”

Mr Gilmore said there would have to be reductions in the numbers working in Irish banks.

Mr Calleary said the majority of employees had heard about the redundancies on Bloomberg TV.

He added that when the figure was added to the 750 redundancies in Bank of Ireland, and the 950 in Aviva and Ulster Bank respectively, the losses completely obliterated all of the gains achieved by IDA Ireland this year.

“It is clear that there is a crisis in the financial sector,’’ Mr Calleary added.

Mr Gilmore said he had been informed that AIB’s management would be communicating with its employees that there would be redundancies which it hoped to achieve “on a voluntary and early retirement basis”.

His first concern, he said, was for the AIB employees because, obviously, this was upsetting news for all who worked at the bank.

He added there had been meetings earlier in the morning between management and the Irish Bank Officials Association and between the Department of Finance and the association.

Mr Gilmore said the Government’s priority would be to create new jobs in the banking and financial services industry. There was a target of 10,000 new jobs in that area in the Government’s action plan, announced some weeks ago. “In addition, we must consider the fact that there will be a large number of people with banking skills and experience who will be available for such employment,’’ he added.

Mr Gilmore said the Government envisaged that work would be done on how to adapt the skills and experience of those who were losing jobs in the banking system so they would be ready for new opportunities arising in the financial services sector.

Mr Calleary said that while he shared Mr Gilmore’s aspirations that the people concerned would be taken care of, information on the crisis in the financial industry was available since October.

“These are skilled personnel,’’ said Mr Calleary. “Unfortunately, the workers on the front line have taken the brunt.’’

Mr Gilmore said that since October the Government had been working on what needed to be done to generate new employment in the sector.

“In the area of education and training, for example, we will examine the needs of the people who are losing their jobs and how the skills and experience they have can be adapted to take up new job opportunities,’’ he said.