ANALYSIS:LARGE-SCALE job losses across the Irish banking sector have been limited primarily to foreign-owned banks in the State.

The decision by the loss-making ACCBank, which is owned by Dutch bank Rabobank, to shed 200 jobs, or 30 per cent of its workforce, continues this trend.

So far, the reduction in payroll costs at the Irish banks and building societies guaranteed by the State are primarily as a result of pay freezes, not replacing staff who depart, career breaks and unpaid leave, and a cut in the number of outside contractors.

Bonuses, performance-related remuneration and other “variable pay” have also been scrapped.

Bank of Ireland said at its full-year results on Tuesday that staff numbers fell 5 per cent in the year to March 2009.

AIB outlined at is annual meeting last week that staff numbers had fallen by 1,600 through the cutting of numbers of contract and agency workers, and through natural turnover of staff leaving the bank.

Outside the Republic, Bank of Ireland is cutting 600 of 4,000 staff in the UK as it withdraws from the British mortgage market. British-owned Ulster Bank, which falls outside the State bank guarantee, is cutting up to 750 jobs.

AIB and Bank of Ireland employ a combined 25,000 staff in the Republic. Applying the same scale of cuts at ACC to the two banks would lead to 7,500 job losses.

An estimated 41,000 people work in Irish retail banking.

None of the lenders guaranteed by the State has yet announced major job cuts within their operations in the Republic.

The series of State supports to the banking sector – the guarantee, the recapitalisation of the banks and the creation of the Nama bad bank to buy toxic property debts – make such a move politically sensitive given taxpayers’ extraordinary patronage of the system.