“I wouldn’t trust the banks,” said Carey, who keeps her savings at credit unions. “I’d be afraid of them. Look at the money they gave to the builders and the terrible situation we’re in now.”
It isn’t easy for retail depositors such as Carey to move funds abroad. In Ireland, there has been some shift to units of foreign banks operating in the country. RaboDirect, the Irish online-banking unit of Utrecht, Netherlands-based Rabobank Group, saw deposits rise about 40 percent in 18 months, according to General Manager Roel van Veggel.
Ireland took control of five lenders and is winding down two of them. Even Bank of Ireland, which wasn’t nationalized because its losses weren’t as catastrophic, saw deposits dwindle by 20 billion euros, or 23 percent, last year.
At Allied Irish Banks Plc (ALBK), Ireland’s second-largest lender, deposits declined 37 percent over the past 18 months. The bank said July 25 that most of the drop occurred at the end of 2010 and in the first quarter of this year as companies pulled money amid sovereign and bank downgrades. Deposits since the end of the first half have been “broadly stable,” said Alan Kelly, the lender’s director of corporate affairs and marketing, who declined further comment.
Deposits by financial institutions in Greek banks, which make up 21 percent of the total, have fallen by one-third since the beginning of 2010, while those by non-financial firms and residents dropped 9 percent, according to Bank of Greece data.