Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Every day we come here there is another unveiling of a litany of scandal in the financial world. Last year the Government-appointed commission on remuneration recommended that the chief executive of the Irish Nationwide Building Society would receive pay capped at €360,000 per annum. The chief executive was paid €1 million as a bonus in November 2008, after the Government guarantee was introduced. It is well known that the person in question had a personal pension fund of €27 million.

In recent days we have come to understand the level of corporate mismanagement and the lack of control in the Irish Nationwide Building Society. It had a loss of €2.5 billion for 2009 and the management structure and behaviour was described by the new chief executive as an outrage. We know that €1 million was paid to the chief executive as a bonus after the guarantee was introduced and we also know from reports this morning that in the four months before the chief executive resigned in April 2009, he was paid €221,000, or an annual equivalent of €663,000, which is well in excess of the level of remuneration recommended by the Government's own watchdog remuneration committee.

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