Brace yourself for "thousands" of redundancies at Irish banks

After a torrid year which has seen the government step in to rescue Ireland's beleaguered banks, you'd be forgiven for starting to believe the worst could be behind us. However, according to the largest bankers union, the real redundancy pain has barely begun.

The Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA) believes that just three banks will remain at the end of the crisis – AIB, Bank of Ireland and EBS – with Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide being forced to wind down. This will, of course, lead to "thousands" of redundancies.

AIB and Bank of Ireland both have approximately 15,000 staff. Irish Life Permanent has about 4,000 while Anglo Irish has 1,500. Around 1,000 work at EBS while Irish Nationwide has about 600 employees.

Consolidation among Ireland's banks is inevitable, believes Larry Broderick, general secretary of the IBOA. The purpose of his comments was to try and make the government take action to ensure there are no compulsory cuts.

The logic, he says, is that the bad loans taken on by the National Asset Management Agency will mean a severe reduction in activities of some of the banks. The "commonality" of these loans – where the different banks leant to the same property developers – could accelerate the consolidation process.

“We need to address this issue now,” said Broderick.