As many as 4,000 jobs could be up for the chop in telecoms company Eircom and across Ireland’s two biggest banks.
According to a report in the Sunday Independent, Eircom may cut as many as 2,000 jobs as part of its restructuring programme.
Meanwhile, in a report in yesterday’s Sunday Tribune, both AIB and Bank of Ireland (BoI) are gearing up for a massive cull of staff numbers in their retail and head-office operations, which could total as much as 1,000 each.
A ‘black day’ for employment
According to Fine Gael’s spokesperson on enterprise, jobs and economic planning, Richard Bruton TD, these potential job losses in banking and telecoms represent “a black day brought about by bad policy”.
“The Government’s disastrous failure to properly oversee two vital sectors, telecoms and banking, is now coming home to roost in this black day for employment in these sectors. These sectors which should have been key arteries of economic success were cocked up by bad oversight and incompetence,” he said.
“Now, the Government continues to believe that the policies that got us into this appalling mess are good enough to get us out of it. It still persists in believing that more doses of pro-cyclical budgetary policy – now making the recession worse, putting the needs of banking ahead of the needs of the real economy and pouring €25bn into failed banks are sufficient to get us out of here. It is not good enough for ministers to be making out that the bottoming out of the economy means the country has turned a corner while doing nothing to tackle the jobs crisis.”
Bruton said the only way for Ireland to confront its jobs crisis is to develop a coherent economic strategy, which he said should include developing key economic arteries, such as broadband, energy and water, developing sectors that offer real jobs prospects such as tourism, education as an international sector and ICT, and restructuring the State to “deliver more with less”.
Article courtesy of Businessandleadership.com
