CRH chief executive Mr Liam O'Mahoney received almost €1.22 million (£964,000) last year, twice as much as any other CRH executive director, according to the group's annual report. The report, however, does not include comparative remuneration figures for 1999.

Mr O'Mahoney's package does not include contributions CRH has made to his pension plan as CRH has aggregated the pension contributions for all its executive directors and these totalled €481,000.

When pension contributions are excluded, Mr O'Mahoney earns more than AIB chief executive Mr Tom Mulcahy and Smurfit chief operations officer Mr Gary McGann. His package, however, is only a fraction of the €6.6 million Dr Michael Smurfit received from Jefferson Smurfit and its Smurfit Stone associate last year.

Mr O'Mahoney's package was mainly made up of a €760,000 salary and a €437,000 bonus - almost the maximum he could receive under the terms of the bonus plan. CRH also operates a long-term incentive plan for its chief executive which is linked to specific targets. Under this plan, a provision of €304,000 has been made for Mr O'Mahoney.

The annual report discloses that former chief executive Mr Don Godson received a payment of €1.27 million under this long-term incentive plan for the 1995-1999 period. Mr Godson retired as chief executive at the end of 1999, but remained an executive for three months to complete specific projects. For this three-month period, he received a salary of €103,000.

CRH finance director Mr Harry Sheridan received a total of €656,000 (excluding pension contributions) made up mainly of a €406,000 salary and a €232,000 bonus. Mr Brian Griffin received €641,000 while Mr Brian Hill received €569,000.

Mr Hill was the only one of CRH's executives not to get close to his maximum bonus. His €147,000 bonus was 38 per cent of his €388,000 salary while the scheme allows for a maximum bonus payment of 60 per cent of salary.

Overall, when allowance is made for the reduction in the number of executive directors, average remuneration increased by 4 per cent to €750,000.

CRH chairman Mr Pat Molloy received a total of €180,000 for the eight months since he became chairman in May 2000. The next best-paid non-executive director is Mr Jack Hayes who received a total of €153,000, including €117,000 for consultancy services. The other nine non-executive directors received between €35,000 and €75,000, based on the length of time they were on the board last year and the amount of board committee work they did.