Looks like we have been bought and sold… again

Recession? What recession? There is no recession for present or former executives of the Irish banking system.

A lot of us believed all this was going to change as soon as we had booted Fianna Fáil out of office and elected a new government that was going to be as pure and as clean as a class of young nuns.
But only this week we read that the former managing director of Allied Irish Banks, Colm Doherty, received a pay package of more than €3 million after stepping down from his job last November.
Okay, the money was awarded in the dying days of the previous government. But the new coalition is not going to do anything about it either. The whole pay structure of senior banking officials will have to be re-examined, said Finance Minister Michael Noonan. That’s as far as the Government is going to go.
We, the people of Ireland, own Allied Irish Banks. This is our money we are talking about here. It does not belong to AIB or to Michael Noonan. It should not belong to Colm Doherty either. Michael Noonan is supposed to be looking after it for us. The least he should do is demand it back. Mr Doherty could hardly have spent the whole €3m over the past few months. Surely he still has the bulk of it lodged safely some place where he or we or Michael Noonan can access it.
The Department of Finance – acting on all our behalf– agreed to this pay-out deal under which poor Mr Doherty had to take a salary cut from €633,000 to €500,000 a year, the Government’s cap for top bankers.
No wonder he took early retirement. Surely the Government hardly expected him to be able to make ends meet on a miserly €500,000 a year.
Ah, but let’s get serious here. I know the salary and pension figures paid to top bankers sound like a joke to most of us who are wondering if we are going to be able to put meat on the table in a few months’ time. But do they really think we are going to continue to tolerate such huge gaps in income without protest?
Are we going to take further cuts in pay and in public services for ourselves while paying out vast sums to the very people who landed us in this mess?
They tell us that we have no choice. They tell us that we have to honour legally binding contracts.
But what if we do not have the money? Can we afford to pay back the money we are borrowing from the European Commission, from the European Central Bank and from the International Monetary Fund? The international markets and the rating agencies say we cannot – and they should know. So if we cannot afford to repay our debts, surely we cannot afford to pay out millions of euros to those who least deserve it.
The whole thing is beyond comprehension. Last week, Allied Irish Banks reported a pretax loss of €12 billion for 2010. That was under Mr Doherty’s stewardship. This is so unbelievable that I want to put that another way and repeat it in case you think I have got this wrong. The bank that lost 12- thousand-million euros last year has paid €3m to the man in charge of that loss.
Could that happen any place else but in Ireland? Are the people of Germany, France, England and the rest of Europe so soft that they would take such payments lying down without a hint of protest? I am not saying that Mr Doherty is to blame for that loss. I am merely saying the loss occurred while he was boss and the buck should stop with him. Instead of asking him to account for that massive loss we are awarding him and allowing him to sail off into the sunset.
There is something rotten in this State and we, the citizens of the State, seem powerless to do anything about it. We did think that by putting in Fine Gael and Labour instead of the discredited Fianna Fáil party, we would change all that. For an educated electorate, we can be very naive at times.
It is still too early to judge the new Government. But so far they have not shown any great desire to bring about the changes they promised before the election. They have talked the talk; it is time to start walking the walk. Actions speak louder than words.
They were going to burn the bondholders and they promised to tell Europe that Ireland was going to assert its sovereignty. But they have done nothing of the sort. They are following the line set down by Fianna Fáil, a line they were going to tear up at the first possible opportunity.
They also promised us that they were going to do away with Fianna Fáil-syle cronyism. But they were hardly a wet week in office when the new Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, appointed a Fine Gael director of elections as Chairman of Bord na gCon. The same Simon described the payment of €3m to Colm Doherty as “inappropriate”. I presume he understands the meaning of the word. What’s inappropriate for Fianna Fáil is okay for Fine Gael.
Meanwhile, I understand that the bank is still searching for a chief executive to replace Mr Doherty. Apparently, they cannot find any banker willing to take on the job for such a small salary as €500,000 a year. I also read this week that the executive chairman, David Hodgkinson, who joined the bank last October, is paid an annual fee of €500,000 plus about €120,000 in accommodation and related expenses, as well as compensation for any tax arising from this benefit.
I hardly need to comment.
Patrick Pearse could have been talking about the bankers when he warned before the 1916 Rising that the authorities were fools if they took the people of Ireland for granted. “They think that they have pacified Ireland,” he said at the grave of the old Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.
“They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half,” he declared. “They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything.”
Could they possibly be making the same mistake again?