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By Robin Morton

Competition in the banking sector in Northern Ireland is set to hot up when Barclays Bank enters the fray next year.

Barclays, one of the big four banks in Britain, is making its entry by means of the Woolwich Bank branches, which it has owned since 2000.

Starting next February, the nine Woolwich outlets are to be re-branded as Barclays, giving the bank a High Street presence in Northern Ireland for the first time.

At present, around 4,000 people in Northern Ireland hold Barclays accounts, but do not have the benefit of a local branch.

Dienna Oppenheimer, Barclays UK retail banking chief executive, said there would be no branch consolidations or redundancies among the 50 Woolwich staff in Northern Ireland.

She pledged that Barclays would be competitive and said that as the programme rolled out, it would look at locations in Northern Ireland in which it did not have a presence.

She said that while Woolwich customers will transfer to Barclays, the Woolwich brand would be used to sustain development of the bank's mortgage business.

She said: "Results in UK retail banking have shown pleasing signs of progress and we have reported a period of sustained income growth.

"However, as we have already made clear, our aim is to accelerate the development of UK Retail Banking toward our objective to be the best bank in the UK."

Northern Ireland's big four banks - Northern, Ulster, Bank of Ireland and First Trust, are currently under investigation by the Competition Commission.