Taoiseach says other executives may have same entitlements as Doherty

THERE “may well be other senior banking executives” with similar contracts to that of former AIB managing director Colm Doherty, but “I don’t know”, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

He expected that following a request from the Minister for Finance “we will receive some further information on the number and range of other persons who may have had similar contracts”.

Mr Doherty left the bank in November last year with a remuneration package of €3 million. Mr Kenny said the “money was paid to Mr Doherty last year before the general election occurred”. He criticised former minister for finance Brian Lenihan and said “if the minister of the day did not want Mr Doherty to be appointed to the bank in the first instance, he should at least have been diligent to the utmost in finding out what contractual arrangements were being made for him”. The contract had been drawn up “at that stage but obviously a copy was not made available to the department”.

He was responding in the Dáil during Leaders’ Questions to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, who asked if there were more bankers going to “walk away with obscene” payments about which the Government claims “it can do nothing”.

Mr Adams had asked how would those who created the financial mess “be held accountable”. He said Mr Kenny cited “contractual entitlements” for not intervening to “get back the millions of the people’s money pocketed by Colm Doherty”.

This came “a week after the announcement that 2,000 lower-paid bank workers would be sacked, while thousands more are being denied modest pay rewards, despite their contractual entitlements”. Mr Adams asked if “we expect to hear further news of more big bankers walking away with obscene severance packages and pensions”.

Mr Kenny told him that “there may well be other senior banking executives who have legal entitlements to similar deals. I do not know”. When Mr Adams told him he should know, Mr Kenny said “the Department of Finance is examining that matter”.