Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

AIB has made a series of jobs outsourcing announcements recently. For example, it announced last week that 230 jobs in its information technology department are to be outsourced. When I tabled a question on this matter to the Minister for Finance some weeks ago, he told me that as the principal shareholder in AIB, he takes "an active interest in how the bank's cost base evolves". He then let it slip that he had been informed by AIB that "the companies involved in the proposed outsourcing are establishing delivery centres in Ireland (in consultation with the IDA)". Is IDA Ireland sponsoring the outsourcing by a State-owned bank of its employees and helping that bank to pass the cost of its employees on to a third party? If so, that is not what IDA Ireland was established to do.

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