Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

Other speakers referred to the extent that the bonus system caused great difficulties in banking. Certain officers, particularly at senior level in banks, were incentivised to be reckless. That was the bottom line of the bonus culture. Bonuses related to activity or profit generated by senior bankers contained the seeds of the downfall of the banks. It is a culture that spread from the United States to London, other main financial centres and into Ireland. We have seen the consequences of it.

Regarding the amendment before us, I do not like the idea of publishing lists of names of people in any particular profession. Ireland is a small country and there is always the risk of scapegoating. It would be sufficient to meet the concerns in the House for a list of the number of people at different levels and the bonuses received was published. The Government could publish the range of bonuses and the fact that a certain number of bank managers received a bonus. Publishing the names and details of employees is something I do not like and there are other ways of achieving the same end.

The Minister needs to explain to us how Bank of Ireland gave bonuses and the Department of Finance did not know about it. There is a well-developed banking division in the Department of Finance and in a situation where Bank of Ireland is a covered institution and there is Government policy on bonuses, they should not have been paid without the Department of Finance being aware of it. We have had no explanation of what happened.

There is a case made that some divisions of banks are profitable and that the employees there deserve bonuses because they were not in loss-making divisions. Investment banking has been profitable in the past number of years. There should be a renegotiation of contracts in order to reward people in a different way. If this was a large garage that became insolvent and had to be bailed out, the salesman selling Land Rovers would not receive commission simply because he made a profit on the sale of Land Rovers when everyone else was losing their shirts and driving the garage into hock. To talk about the profitability of a particular division in an insolvent institution and argue that the taxpayer should subsidise bonuses given to people working in that division lacks logic and does not stand up to normal commercial scrutiny.

I agree with the spirit of the amendment but I would not find it acceptable to have lists of names of employees down to the most junior who receive bonuses. A line must be drawn somewhere. It might be possible that the names of people with the top ten most lucrative bonuses would be published but it is not appropriate that the names of every person who got a bonus down to the girl in the call centre who got a few euros at Christmas should be published, listed and held up to opprobrium and ridicule.

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