EDITOR'S TAKE: It's easy to forget the amount of jobs pain Ireland's banking sector has already felt

As we've mentioned many times before, the pain felt in terms of job losses within the Irish banking sector appears tiny in proportion to the amount of damage inflicted on the industry over the last two years.

In other international markets, as the global financial crisis took hold in late-2008, thousands of heads were cut rapidly as banks sought to pare back costs. Even more recently, after wobbles during the second half of 2010, the likes of Barclays Capital and Credit Suisse have cut hundreds of jobs.

But in Ireland, where the scale of the banking sector's problems has been slow to come to light, it's been a decidedly more drawn out affair.

Hundreds of jobs have been lost at any one time - in the likes of Bank of Ireland, Bank of Scotland (Ireland) and Anglo Irish - as well as drip-drip redundancies in much smaller numbers under the radar.

What's more, the long-standing policy of not replacing departing staff has been effective in reducing costs and the redeployment of employees in frontline lending roles to loan workout positions has also diminished the necessity of immediate redundancies.

But the real pain seems still to be ahead of us.

Yesterday's announcement by Permanent TSB that it's seeking a further 280 voluntary redundancies - or a fifth of total headcount - will be viewed by some as another example of chickens belatedly coming home to roost.

After all, the job losses in the wider Irish economy, where unemployment surged to 11.8% last year, has led many to claim the banking sector has yet to feel its fair share of pain.

In reality, though, the number of jobs lost in Ireland's banking sector is significant. As IBOA, the finance union, has pointed out nearly 7,000 jobs have gone in since late 2008, which is a large proportion of an industry estimated to employ a total of 40,000-50,000.

What's more, a further 2,000 jobs have been earmarked to go in the next couple of months, it suggests, and there are fears that 10,000 jobs could go as a result of the restructuring plans put in place after the IMF/EU bailout.

Fair enough, you might argue, this is banking-led recession, so it's only right that those working in the culpable institutions are made to pay.

But the problem is the way the redundancies have been handled. With the government in charge of the purse strings, there's been a lot of dilly dallying with the job cut decisions and - as the next round of job cuts at AIB will demonstrate - redundancy payments are becoming decidedly less generous.

In the long-term this is damaging to Ireland's financial services industry. With pay and benefits frozen or cut and lengthy anxious waits over redundancy announcements, those in the sector would have been weighing up their options for some time.

Many have already looked overseas, and those currently awaiting job cut news may also follow when confronted with a barren banking job market. Those who decide to stick around, especially retail banking or back office roles, could simply leave the industry.

This is the sort of hammer blow that will take years to recover from.