Directors: AIB has a high-level board that must now decide what to do.

Mr Dermot Gleeson took over as chairman of AIB in 2003. He is a former Attorney General and former member of the Council of State. He is a director of Independent News & Media and the Gate Theatre and is a former chairman of the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Service. He joined the board in 2000 after representing the bank as senior counsel at the Dáil inquiry into the bank's role in facilitating the evasion of Deposit Interest Retention Tax in the 1980s and 1990s.

He is understood to have played a central role in advising the bank in the handling of the $691 million currency fraud in 2002, something that is thought to have been a factor in his appointment as chairman.

Sir Derek Higgs, author of a review of the effectiveness of non-executive directors in the UK, is director of SG Warburg and a former director of Prudential.

Mr Adrian Burke is chairman of the bank's audit committee. He is an accountant, is vice-chairman of the Institute of European Affairs and a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He joined the board in 1997.

Mr Padraic Fallon joined AIB as a director in 1988 and is chairman of Euromoney Institutional Investor and a director of Daily Mail and General Trust plc.

Mr Don Godson is former chief executive of CRH and is a member of the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business at University College Dublin. He joined the board in 1997.

Economist Mr Jim O'Leary has served on the board since 2001; former US ambassador to Ireland, Mr Michael Sullivan, also joined the same year. Ms Carol Moffett has been on the board since 1995, while Mr Robert Wilmers, chairman, president and chief executive of M&T Bank, joined in 2003. Mr Michael Buckley (finance director), Mr Gary Kennedy and Mr Aidan McKeon, who heads its UK operations, also sit on the board.