Eoghan Murphy
Question:100. Deputy Eoghan Murphy asked the Minister for Finance his position on the transfer by AIB of €1.1 billion of its assets to its pension fund. [57931/12]
View answerWednesday, 16 January 2013
Questions (100)
Written answers
The Deputy will be aware that the asset transfer to AIB’s pension scheme was directly linked to the bank’s Early Retirement and Voluntary Severance Programme and was essential for the bank to be able to fund these plans. It was not connected with addressing any existing deficit in the bank’s pension fund.
The achievement of these staff reductions in the bank is expected to result in annual savings to AIB in excess of €200m which is a critical component of AIB’s plans to return to long term viability. It is highly likely, that in the absence of this arrangement, the bank would have been unable to achieve its target staff departure figures on a voluntary basis which would have required the need for significant numbers of compulsory redundancies and brought with it associated industrial relations difficulties.
The nature of the transfer concerned also had an added advantage for the bank in that the loan assets concerned were indented for disposal as part of the bank’s deleveraging commitments.