AIB branch closures and jobs
Deputy Kelly challenged AIB’s plan to cut jobs and close rural branches, asking what the Government would do to protect workers in a State-owned bank. The Tánaiste argued banking is changing through digitalisation and said many branches would have been lost anyway if the banks had not been rescued.
AIB has announced it will cut 1,500 jobs, closing many rural branches again. The State owns 71% of the bank. My party was the only party in the State that voted against bailing the banks out ten years ago or more. AIB had profits of €1.25 billion in 2018 and €500 million in 2019. Now it is engaged in a vanity project of buying back Goodbody Stockbrokers, which it sold during the crash. It is also charging serious fees to people who have less than €2,500 in their bank accounts and will not engage with the Financial Services Union. What will the Government do to protect those workers in a bank that is 71% owned by the State?
Comment on this
The rights and wrong of the bank bailout and guarantee could be and, no doubt, will be debated for decades but I am certain that, had they not been bailed out, all of those staff would have lost their jobs ten or 12 years ago. That is exactly what happened to the staff at Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and other banks which were allowed to fail.
The banking sector is changing, like many sectors. It is moving online, being digitalised and automated. That is happening in the real world around us. The vast majority of people no longer set foot in a bank branch, whereas people used to regularly go into bank branches. That has changed and the sector has to adapt to that. I had a good meeting with the Financial Services Union a few weeks ago to discuss some of the changes. One thing they have suggested is a banking forum being established to think through what the future of banking services will look like in the country. I am taking that up with the Minister for Finance.