Bank of Scotland shut down sees loss of 14 Halifax jobs in Navan and Ashbourne

Updated: Wednesday, 17th February, 2010 4:52pm

With 14 jobs on the line at the Halifax bank branches in Navan and Ashbourne, workers have vowed to fight tooth and nail to maintain their jobs.

The parent company, Bank of Scotland Ireland, announced last week that it was to close its retail branch network and call centre with the loss of 750 jobs throughout the bank.

The job losses in Meath are a further blow to the unemployment figures in the county, which have risen by 211 per cent in the last two years.

There are 400 jobs on the line nationwide in 44 Halifax retail outlets, 130 jobs at the Bank of Scotland (Ireland) customer service centre in Dundalk and a further 220 jobs to be cut in associated services and the asset finance division at the bank's Dublin headquarters.

Bernard Daly, secretary of the UNITE group within the Bank said; "Our workforce is made up of partners; of people who left secure jobs on the promise of a long stable future; and of many returning sons and daughters who took the opportunity to return to Ireland and reunite their families. There is a huge human cost to the announcement today, and people are in a state of total shock."

UNITE has published a report commissioned from FGS Consulting which showed that Bank of Scotland (Ireland) would be an invaluable component of the third banking force which is likely to emerge from discussions between the government, Permanent TSB, the EBS and Irish Nationwide Building Societies.

UNITE Regional Officer Brian Gallagher said the report clearly demonstrates the unique role which the bank's experience in the SME sector can play in the third banking force and the national recovery, but rather than engage on this, they have chosen instead to panic and make a hasty announcement which puts 750 employees on notice that their jobs will be gone before the summer.

"It is a crazy, wrong headed decision which is likely born of a London boardroom that has no sense of the strong future which the bank can have. We will not give up on these jobs, they are too important for the country as a whole for the government to allow them slide away," he said.

The 14 jobs that will be lost in the Ashbourne and Navan branches of Halifax are yet another blow to Meath's unemployment figures according to Senator Dominic Hannigan.

He sympathised with the Halifax workers who will lose their jobs and he called for a debate on the banking industry. He said the latest unemployment statistics make for sobering reading.

"If Brian Cowen or Mary Coughlan appeared on the Apprentice, Bill Cullen would have fired them long ago for lack of interest. It appears the only jobs this Government want to protect are their own," said Senator Hannigan.

During an Oireachtas debate on unemployment Senator Hannigan pointed out that the number of people in Meath who have lost jobs jumped from 3,557 in December 2007 to 11,071 in December 2009. He said of the 86,000 young people on the live register, over 2,000 of them are in Meath.

"The fact is Meath's unemployment figures are probably underestimated as some people living in towns like Ashbourne have to sign on in Dublin. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people who have lost jobs or who left education and cannot get work, have been turned upside down in the last two years," he said.

Senator Hannigan said the most shocking aspect of the unemployment crisis has been the Government's lack of leadership and imagination. "Politics is about solving problems. Unemployment is the biggest problem we face in this country. However it appears our Government doesn't believe this is so."

He said the Labour Party had consistently called for a jobs strategy and had produced a detailed 10 point plan outlining its new approach.

"I'm not saying either the Government or the opposition has all the answers but we need leadership from the Government which to date has been sadly lacking."

Senator Hannigan said boom time thinking and policies were still largely in place and wouldn't help solve the unemployment crisis.