Anglo Irish’s decision to award 70 staff ‘modest’ pay rises is not only out of kilter with continued poor results at the bank, but is also unreflective of salary trends in the country’s financial sector generally.

The move to award salary increases to 40 staff in Ireland, 20 in the UK and 10 employees in its US operations has not gone down well at all. Needless to say, after nationalisation, ongoing losses and a voluntary redundancy plan that has seen 230 employees leave the bank, this is not a great PR stunt.

Anglo has defended the move by saying the increases were awarded to those where roles and responsibilities changed in the wake of the redundancy programme and where “qualifications of direct relevance to the individuals’ day-to-day job were completed in the past 12 months.”

It also points to the fact that remuneration for a substantial proportion of staff would have been bonus-related, which means average take-home pay has been “substantially reduced”.

Nonetheless, any sort of pay rise within Ireland’s financial services industry is still a rare occurrence. The fact they’ve cropped up within Anglo will no doubt inflame public anger around this already sensitive issue.

According to the 2010 Robert Walter salary survey, banking and financial services remuneration in Ireland shrunk by an average of 10-20%, and benefits packages were also “largely curtailed”. Corporate banking was among the most badly-affected sectors, with salaries shrinking by as much as €18k at the senior end.

Next week, Anglo is due to post its first financial results since May last year and is expected to unveil losses of up to €12bn for the 15 months to 31 December 2009. This could mean a further €6bn of state aid is required.

There’s also the fact that nearly 600 staff have left the bank through a combination of redundancies, natural attrition, the sale of its Austrian operation and the transfer of its internal monitoring loans unit to NAMA.

Headcount now stands at 1,240.