Bank of Ireland may have been cutting staff in the last six months

Redundancy announcements in the Irish domestic banking world are a still rare beast, as government intervention prevented what would have inevitably been deep cuts. However, as Bank of Ireland's trading statement today revealed, they're not averse to a little trimming.

BoI released a trading statement today to coincide with the government's guarantee announcement on NAMA. It expects to generate income for the six months to 30 September 2009 that will be "mid-teens percentage points lower" than the comparable period last year.

Not surprisingly, it's maintaining its iron grip on costs. But, while previously it pointed to reduced variable compensation and recruitment freezes, now it's admitted to having reduced staff numbers over the last six months:

"Cost discipline remains strong across the Group and we expect costs in the six months to 30 September 2009 to be 'high single digit' percentage points lower than in the prior comparable period. A reduction in staff costs through lower staff numbers is the main driver of this expected outcome."

So, somewhere around the 7-9% mark then? Not huge, obviously, but a fairly significant chunk of the 16,026 employees it had at the end of 2008, particularly as it was also trimming headcount in the first quarter.

Brian Lucey, finance professor at Trinity College, says that the big Irish banks have already been scaling back, even if redundancy announcements aren't forthcoming.

"I'm not talking about brutal cuts, but a decent number of people will have already gone from the big Irish banks," he says. "When you employ thousands of people, it's relatively easy to reduce that figure by a couple of hundred just by natural attrition."