18/11/2009

AIB Chief Forced To Accept €500,000 Salary

Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced in the Dáil today that Colm Doherty has accepted his capped salary of €500,000.

Mr Doherty, who is an AIB board member, has agreed to accept a paycut of €130,000 in order to comply with the government's €500,000 pay cap for bank bosses in order to become Managing Director at the troubled bank.

The Taoiseach said Mr Doherty will take up the position at the banking group with immediate effect and Eugene Sheehy will stand down at the end of November.

Earlier, Tánaiste Mary Coughlan said the proposal from the bank to appoint the new Managing Director at a higher salary was in the media before the Minister for Finance received correspondence from the bank.

She said the details were leaked which did not allow due process to take place.

Yesterday, a furore emerged after the details of the appointment and salary cap breach were reported in an Irish newspaper. Within hours of the story hitting the headlines, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan insisted the salary for Managing Director would not exceed the limit of €500,000, which was set earlier this year.

The news of the acceptance of the capped salary emerged this morning.

Yesterday, the Labour Party said such a breach of the salary cap made a "mockery" of the government's promises.

Labour Spokesperson on Finance, Joan Burton, said the flouting of the salary cap represented "game, set and match" for the old guard in Irish banking and total capitulation on the part of Minister for Finance.

Ms Burton said: "The taxpayers who have already contributed €3.5bn towards the recapitalisation of AIB, and who are now told they face extra charges and cuts in services in the budget, are being asked to accept that it is fine for a banker to earn more than twenty times the average industrial wage.

"The appointment to the position of Executive Chairman of Mr. O’Connor, who has been a member of the Board of AIB since 2007, would make a mockery of all of the promises we have had from the Taoiseach and Minister Lenihan that they were going to deliver real regime changes in the bank."

(DW/KMcA)


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