Irish banks to shed jobs in consolidation
* Union: only 3 Irish-owned banks to remain vs 6 now
* Consolidation to lead to job losses -finance union
* Union working to defer job cuts, opposes wage cuts
DUBLIN, June 19 (Reuters) - Ireland's finance union expects financial sector consolidation to reduce the number of Irish-owned banks to three from six, leading to heavy job losses, the union's leader said on Friday.
The Irish Bank Officials' Association's strategy is to try and defer those job losses until the economy emerges from deep recession and to avoid compulsory redundancies, IBOA General Secretary Larry Broderick said.
"There has to be consolidation," Broderick told Reuters in an interview. "That's where we'll probably see the real extent of the potential job losses."
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) last week became the latest bank to announce more than a thousand job cuts in Britain but there have been no redundancies of a similar scale in Ireland, whose government is spending at least around 10 billion euros
($14 billion) this year to rescue banks.
"The banks in Ireland at this point in time are in a very bad place financially," Broderick said. "They must be looking at job reductions as part of a solution to that problem."
Ireland has injected 3.5 billion euros each to Allied Irish Banks (ALBK.I) and Bank of Ireland (BKIR.I), giving it 25 percent indirect stakes in the country's two top lenders. It has also earmarked up to 4 billion euros to help Anglo Irish Bank, which was nationalised in January.
The six institutions Broderick referred to also include bancassurer Irish Life & Permanent (IPM.I) and building societies EBS and Irish Nationwide, all covered by a state guarantee for bank liabilities introduced last year.
"FAR FROM FAT CATS"
Dublin is also setting up a National Asset Management Agency
(NAMA) to take over risky loans worth up to 90 billion euros from the banks. Continued...
