Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I do not know, but it is not quite the end of an era yet. The EBS is holding firm in its stance. Complaints about practices within the Irish Nationwide Building Society are for the financial services ombudsman and the Financial Regulator and some have already been adjudicated on.

Senator Ryan referred to the salaries of the managing directors and he may be right. Private companies have a keen focus on profit and making profits is usually written into their contracts. It is relatively easy to determine an appropriate salary based on what a person makes for the company in a given year. It is probably harder to quantify the value a person adds to mutual building societies or State bodies, for which I have worked all my life.