The union issued the recommendation in a four-page newsletter which will be distributed this week to its AIB members along with ballot papers. Members will have around four weeks to make up their minds before the 3 August ballot deadline.

The newsletter also contains a call to recruit new members to the IBOA ahead of the ballot and offers 30 shopping voucher to any member who recruits three colleagues to the union.

Non-union AIB employees would still fall under the terms of the hybrid pension scheme whether they join the union or not.

AIB's hybrid pension proposal offers defined-benefit pension coverage for all staff (new and old) on up to 61,997 . . . an assistant manager's salary . . . with a defined contribution system applying for all pay above that threshold.

The IBOA AIB executive committee has said this deal is "significantly better" than the existing defined-contribution pension arrangement that was applying to new staff.

According to figures published in the newsletter, staff on 61,997 would retire with a 41,000-a-year pension versus 27,000 a year on a defined-contribution scheme at a 3% contribution rate.

The AIB board's decision followed a recommendation by Kevin Foley of the Labour Relations Commission, under whose auspices the bank and the union have been negotiating.

A spokesman for the union told the Sunday Tribune at the time that its members were not in a rush to come to any conclusions about the new plan.

"This is big for our people in AIB, " he said. "We're not going to rush our members into a decision. People have questions on every point.

We've put three years into this review, so it's not just a case of saying, 'Yeah, it's great'. You're talking about people who deal with finance every day."

If the hybrid pension is accepted, executives in the IBOA expect the changes at AIB . . . the country's secondlargest employer . . . to have an impact on a national level in financial services and among other institutional employers and semi-states.

AIB's rival, Bank of Ireland, is in negotiations of its own with the IBOA at the Labour Relations Commission over a new pension scheme the bank tried to introduce last year and the union feels its success on one front will support its efforts on the other.

A survey of IBOA members in Bank of Ireland found that 90% believed the bank should not be able to change its pensions arrangements without the agreement of the union.

According to an update to IBOA members issued last Wednesday, the bank is "prepared to engage" with the union on this issue.