Banks under pressure to announce job cuts

A number of banks, including AIB and Bank of Ireland, are coming under pressure to impose thousands of planned redundancies.

It has emerged the troika wants proposed job cuts at institutions bailed out by the State to be introduced as a matter of urgency.

A report in today's Irish Independent says the EU, ECB and IMF have told the Government that progress on the issue must be made before the next bailout review in April.

AIB alone is planning to cut 2,000 positions.

However general secretary of the Irish Bank Officials Association Larry Broderick said the Department of Finance was holding up the process.

"We have now reached an agreement with Bank of Ireland in relation to restructuring. Unfortunately, because of impediments in the Department of Finance, they haven’t been allowed to proceed.

"Equally, we're awaiting the announcement of 2,000 redundancies in AIB. Yet again, we're finding ourselves in the situation where the Department of Finance is not allowing AIB to engage with this union to try to agree the parameters for those redundancies."