Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Let us strip the long-term incentive share options from the bonus, although it is the same thing. They are financial. I was on the banking inquiry and we all know what bankers did. They drove their staff to sell products and loans on the basis that their remuneration was tied to the amount of products sold. It was far from customer-centric. The staff should be financially rewarded appropriately and do what is in the best interests of the customers, as opposed to pushing products or credit on a customer that the customer does not want. It is ten years later but many members of this committee have memories of getting telephone calls or text messages telling them they were approved for an overdraft facility of €10,000 or were pre-approved for a loan of X amount. That was the culture within the bank and it was very much tied in with an incentive and bonus-driven culture, which Dr. Hunt is now arguing should be brought back into the bank.