Ireland flies in the face of UK pessimism

Ireland is showing unbending optimism over bonus expectations, despite the fact that the majority of payouts were paltry last year.

In a survey of 150 Irish finance workers conducted by eFinancialCareers.com, it emerged that 49.2% anticipate higher bonuses next year, while only 9.9% expect bonuses to be lower. The remaining 41.8% are uncertain about the dimensions of this year's payouts.

Not only are Irish staff optimistic that bonuses will rise, they are also confident that the increase will be significant. A total of 21.5% think an increase of up to 60% is on the cards. However, another 32% expect bonuses to go up by less than 10%.

Irish predictions are broadly in line with the global survey, which took in responses from 19,000 financial services professionals. Internationally, 49.5% of people think bonuses will be better this year than last, and just 13.8% think they will be worse.

However, UK workers were among the most pessimistic, with nearly 20% predicting lower bonuses than last year and 40.8% expecting 2008 to be even worse than 2007.

But it seems Irish confidence is built on shaky ground - last year, of the Irish financial services professionals who received bonuses, 71.6% got less than €10k. However, nearly 40% of respondents didn't get a bonus at all, according to the survey. This may be because only 16% of those surveyed were at managerial level.

Irish respondents' optimism is also belied by rival surveys - Joslin Rowe's 2007 salary survey said junior-level bonuses were just 5-15% last year, a figure that it expects to remain frozen in 2007.