Published: Wednesday, 17th February, 2010 4:30pm

Athlone Halifax to close after shock withdrawal

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Workers at Halifax in the Golden Island Shopping Centre in Athlone are among the 750 set to lose their jobs following the shock decision of parent company Bank of Scotland (Ireland) to withdraw from the retail banking sector entirely.

The company, in a statement last week, said it intended to focus on the corporate and commercial banking market.

The company said, after a strategic review, it had concluded that the Halifax retail business and Bank of Scotland (Ireland) intermediary business would not, unfortunately, achieve their financial and strategic objectives as originally planned.

"The fledgling Halifax retail business lacks the required scale to succeed in this very tough economic climate. There is no strategy for this business that will see it achieve break-even or profit in a realistic timeframe.

Unfortunately, the Halifax retail banking business is simply too small to succeed in this contracting market," it added.

The company said it would commence to close the Halifax branches from May. The 750 redundancies would happen, in the main, between the end of May and July.

The Bank of Scotland (Ireland) Intermediary business which provides residential mortgages through brokers, motor finance and commercial asset finance is also to close.

The bank said customers' savings and investments were secure and it would start contacting customers by the end of the month to explain the ramifications of the decisions. However, the Halifax retail banking business has ceased taking new business for current accounts, mortgages, savings, personal loans, credit cards and insurance products.

The bank said the majority of the 750 redundancies would be compulsory, with the balance being achieved through natural turnover, redeployment and voluntary redundancy.

The bank operation has been under threat since the takeover of Bank of Scotland by the Lloyds Banking Group in January 2009. UNITE representatives have sought to elicit guarantees about future plans in Ireland but these have never been forthcoming.

"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," said Bernard Daly, Secretary of the UNITE group within the Bank.

Information for customers is available on the website, www.halifax.ie, and customers can call 1890 818181 for further information

There will also be information for BOSI customers on the website, www.bankofscotland.ie, and customers can call 1800 556583 for BOSI Homeloans, 01 898 0004 for BOSI Asset Finance and 01 898 0002 for BOSI Motor Finance for further information.