Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator Darragh O'Brien and others have mentioned bankers' salaries, but in particular that of the Bank of Ireland's CEO. I addressed this matter yesterday and said that it was totally immoral for anybody to be on that amount of salary. The Government only has a 15% share in the Bank of Ireland. The Mercer report demanded decreases of between 6% and 10% and I hope that will happen. I hope we will hear an announcement about that next week and that we will have in excess of 10% cuts for many of the senior executives in that bank. The Government is anxiously waiting for the banks to get back to it on that issue.

As regards the situation in AIB, it is regrettable that the bank's board has made a strictly commercial decision. The Irish taxpayer has invested over €20 billion in AIB, so it is essential that the bank is run in a commercial manner in the best interests of the shareholder. In this instance, the shareholder is the Irish taxpayer.