Will NAMA mean banking job cuts?

The National Asset Management Agency could spur increased consolidation within Ireland's banking sector that would result in potentially thousands of redundancies.

This is a rather stark warning from The Irish Banking Officials Association, the union representing 23,000 financial services workers, which issued a statement on the potential impact of NAMA.

Initially concerns were raised that thousands of credit management jobs within Irish banks could go, as the functions were transferred across to the new 'bad bank'. But these staff will now manage the toxic assets on NAMA's behalf.

However, there are other fears. Here are the main points in the IBOA's statement:

-"Once the transfer of toxic assets from the financial institutions to NAMA gets under way, it opens up the possibility for a major consolidation of the sector through mergers, acquisitions or closures."

-"The Minister for Finance already has significant powers in this regard under the legislation which extended the state guarantee last September. The draft legislation on NAMA published last week confers additional powers on the Minister - which could greatly facilitate the consolidation process."

-"IBOA is concerned that consolidation could be used as a pretext by senior managements to pursue an opportunistic cost-cutting agenda putting thousands of jobs at risk."

And here are its suggestions to avoid the job cuts:

-"We would ask the Minister of Finance to move quickly to address the need to change the culture of banking and to ensure that the boards of financial institutions are recast in order to promote this change."

-"We believe that the Minister should go further by convening a Commission on Banking - with representatives from all of the stake-holders in the sector, including shareholders, senior management, staff, customers, the relevant State agencies and political parties - to try to achieve a consensus on the future direction of the sector and its role within the economy."