DUBLIN (Reuters) – Britain's Lloyds is closing its Irish business banking operation and effectively pulling out of the country in the latest blow for a local industry ravaged by bad debts and recession.

Lloyds shuttered its 44-branch retail business, Halifax, in Ireland earlier this year and said yesterday it had changed its mind about maintaining its business operation after concluding there was little opportunity for growth.

Lloyds employs around 800 people in its Bank of Scotland (Ireland) unit and it said around 90 percent of them would transfer over to an independent service company that would administer the runoff of its Irish business banking unit.

"We don't know who this service company is going to be. The management said it's their intention to give us a guarantee of no further jobs losses until 2013 but we were told six months ago that Lloyds banking group were committed to this market," said Brian Gallagher, regional officer with the UNITE trade union.

Other foreign-owned banks have also exited parts of the Irish retail market and the deputy chief executive of Danske Bank's National Irish Bank unit, which is shutting almost half its branches, told Reuters last week that more would likely leave.