Irish Nationwide staff facing redundancy after ILP transfer, Anglo employees safe (for now)

Since the announcement last week that the deposit books of Irish Nationwide Building Society and Anglo Irish Bank were to be transferred to Irish Life & Permanent (ILP) and AIB respectively, the fate of around 450 bank staff has been in a state of flux.

Initially it was assumed that the 237 Irish Nationwide staff and the 210 Anglo employees affected by the move would be transferred across along with the €12bn combined deposit books of the banks. Now, however, it's become apparent just how shaky their job prospects are.

In reporting its 2010 results yesterday, Irish Life & Permanent confirmed that it had retained the €3.6bn deposit book of Irish Nationwide, but that it had offered voluntary redundancy to the 237 staff who moved across as part of the transfer.

This amounts to over half of Irish Nationwide's original headcount.

In fairness, the neither AIB nor ILP ever offered any guarantee of job security for the employees transferring across, but ILP did give assurances to staff that no compulsory redundancies would be inflicted. This move was welcomed by finance union IBOA on Friday.

So far, AIB has been relatively silent on the matter. On receipt of the €8.6bn of Anglo deposits the bank said it would "welcome the c. 120,000 customers and c. 210 staff transferring to AIB and are working to ensure that any disruption for both will be minimal."

But the sad reality is that those Anglo staff have every right to feel nervous about their job prospects. AIB is undertaking a sweeping review of its operations as it looks to downsize under the terms of the IMF-EU bailout.

Representatives from the IBOA met with AIB's executive chairman David Hodgkinson in February to discuss the inevitable job cuts in the bank that were expected to be announced at the end of the month.

So far, there's been little clarity on the matter, which may have something to do with the transfer of Anglo's deposit book on Friday and the sudden increase in headcount as a result.

Either way, redundancies at AIB expected to be deep, possibly thousands rather than hundreds, and it's safe to say that at least some of those Anglo staff will be included.