Irish Nationwide's 129th annual meeting was a much shorter and more civilised affair than normal with some air conditioning and the whiff of free money keeping the crowd largely in check.

Many of the hundreds of members who gathered at Dublin's RDS for the event were horrified when just minutes after the chairman's address, one man called for the meeting to be abandoned and moved to another venue, where members might enjoy a less "oppressive" atmosphere.

"There is no ventilation. No windows. It's hard to breathe," he protested before storming out. He said he would have liked to stay but couldn't.

Soon after his departure, the air conditioning whirred, forcing the more vociferous members to raise their voices when using the microphone to either praise or criticise the board of directors.

Unusually, the five men who sat at the top table received more congratulations than insults, something that made one member suspicious. "It sounds like a packed audience," he suggested, accusing Dr Con Power - who chaired the discussion around the election challenge between chairman Dr Michael Walsh and Mr Brendan Burgess - of being selective when choosing speakers from the floor.

The cooler temperature did little to quell Dr Power's anger at the accusation and he forcefully demanded a retraction which was forthcoming.

One woman said the society's chief executive, Mr Michael Fingleton, was a man that Irish people should be proud of. "You worked hard for the good of the society. You ran it perfectly. Thank you for all you've done for shareholders," she said.

Dr Walsh rejected suggestions from the floor that maybe there was a need for new blood on the board, with one man asking if he could vote for him and for Mr Burgess.

After casting their votes to set the conversion process under way most members didn't even wait for the meeting to officially end. They were already planning how to spend their windfall.