Taxpayers Aghast as Bankers Continue to Coin it
March 9, 2010
The revelation that former AIB boss Eugene Sheehy walked away with a golden parachute worth almost €900,000 will leave members of the public gasping in astonishment.
People who are struggling to make a mortgage payment or who have recently lost their jobs, will look at the excessive figures being handed over to AIB executives and directors and will be left scratching their heads. After all this is an institution that owes its very survival to a €3.5bn bailout, courtesy of the Irish taxpayer.
It beggars belief that AIB are considering hiking lending rates by up to 1 per cent to stem their losses, but they refuse to take a scalpel to executive pay.Gouging customers and squeezing low level bank officials to pay a kings ransom to senior management is simply inexcusable.
We know that these extraordinarily high levels of payments for executives, and in particular the remuneration packages which incentivised short-term risk-taking and excessive lending, were part of what contributed to the bank’s downfall in the first place. It seems that the banks are very slow learners and that the government is forgetting to prompt them, when AIB is dependent on taxpayer life support in order to survive.
One director quite correctly decided to take no fee in the context of the massive losses suffered by the bank. I would applaud that gesture, but it is a pity that others have not followed his lead.
As far as ordinary taxpayers are concerned the reign of ‘money is no object ’ continues unabated in AIB. What’s more, the Taoiseach keeps warning us that at the end of this month he is going to be back with a further major recapitalisation programme for the banks including AIB.
Lots of these people will retire and ride off into the sunset with enhanced bonuses, pensions and other compensation packages, to villas in Marbella, while the ordinary taxpayers of Ireland will be left here to pick up the tab.
People who are struggling to make a mortgage payment or who have recently lost their jobs, will look at the excessive figures being handed over to AIB executives and directors and will be left scratching their heads. After all this is an institution that owes its very survival to a €3.5bn bailout, courtesy of the Irish taxpayer.
It beggars belief that AIB are considering hiking lending rates by up to 1 per cent to stem their losses, but they refuse to take a scalpel to executive pay.Gouging customers and squeezing low level bank officials to pay a kings ransom to senior management is simply inexcusable.
We know that these extraordinarily high levels of payments for executives, and in particular the remuneration packages which incentivised short-term risk-taking and excessive lending, were part of what contributed to the bank’s downfall in the first place. It seems that the banks are very slow learners and that the government is forgetting to prompt them, when AIB is dependent on taxpayer life support in order to survive.
One director quite correctly decided to take no fee in the context of the massive losses suffered by the bank. I would applaud that gesture, but it is a pity that others have not followed his lead.
As far as ordinary taxpayers are concerned the reign of ‘money is no object ’ continues unabated in AIB. What’s more, the Taoiseach keeps warning us that at the end of this month he is going to be back with a further major recapitalisation programme for the banks including AIB.
Lots of these people will retire and ride off into the sunset with enhanced bonuses, pensions and other compensation packages, to villas in Marbella, while the ordinary taxpayers of Ireland will be left here to pick up the tab.