Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The banking collapse was referenced in the opening statements. Perhaps the witnesses will disagree, but one of things that led to the banking collapse was a culture of very high levels of executive pay. Staff at companies such as Lehman Brothers were paying themselves huge salaries.

In terms of the culture board, currently there is a campaign to raise the salary caps in those banks, in particular, that were bailed out by the taxpayer. The salary cap currently is €600,000, which by the standard of most ordinary people is pretty generous. Many median salaries in Ireland are around the €50,000 mark. That salary cap is ten times more than the median salary that would qualify an individual to get some assistance with his or her mortgage. What is the bank's stance on the current campaign by a number of financial institutions and individuals to have the salary cap removed? Reference was made to moving to long-term incentivisation. Will Mr. Cross explain the position of the culture board on the removal of salary caps in the context that most people would consider €600,000 to be a generous enough salary? He said the argument has been made that the banks cannot get the right people. That particular culture was one of the key factors in precipitating the crash, and that included Ireland. Some of the entities which crashed were paying their senior executives extraordinary sums of money at the time. Has Mr. Cross a sense of where the Central Bank stands in the context of a culture of corporate responsibility to ensure there are no further crashes? Is the Central Bank a supporter of lifting the salary cap? Has it advised Government not to do it or to do it? Given the Central Bank is examining financial probity and reducing risk, and given, as has been acknowledged worldwide, the whole masters of the universe syndrome in terms of people like Lehman Brothers and the extraordinary salaries people were paid before the crash, does Mr. Cross support raising and allowing bank bonuses to rise very significantly in Ireland?