DISCUSSION OF potential job losses in State-covered banks is “premature”, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has told the Dáil.

But the Government would take the same approach to retraining and upskilling of staff, “irrespective of how staff were made redundant or the status of the institution”, he said.

The Minister was responding to questions in the Dáil about bank job losses in the wake of confirmation yesterday by Ulster Bank that it is to cut its 6,000 workforce by 950 jobs.

Fianna Fáil deputy leader Éamon Ó Cuív pointed to predictions of up to 5,000 job losses in the financial sector. He asked if the Government had had discussions on job losses with “the covered institutions such as Bank of Ireland and AIB”. He warned that if more bank workers were let go it “will become more difficult to absorb them into expanding financial services”.

The Minister, who expressed his sympathies for the employees, said “as there have been no other redundancies announced, it might be premature to raise the issue”.

Mr Quinn said the Government would soon launch a comprehensive programme, Pathways to Work, which would assess unemployed workers’ skills and offer them a range of options “as to how they might upgrade or divert sideways to improve their skills to enhance their job opportunities”.

Workers “will be assessed as to what they want to do, their current skills; where they can get upskilling and training to enhance their employability in sectors actively seeking workers”.

He said there were opportunities in the information technology sector.

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said the Minister’s sympathy for Ulster Bank workers “is not enough”.

She asked when the Government first heard about the job losses “because they are very significant in number and it seems an astonishing thing that the story as it were just fell from the sky”.

The Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin deputy leaders both expressed concern that the redundancy packages to be offered to Ulster Bank employees would be secure.

Mr Quinn said he had “every confidence” in the ability of the trade union representing Ulster Bank workers to negotiate their redundancy packages.

“If there are difficulties which are beyond the capacity of the social partners to sort out themselves then the Government will assist,” he said.

“It is not the business of Government to interfere in that particular process,” he said.

“If they run into difficulties the machineries of State are there to assist them but there have been no requests for such assistance.”