Twenty four Bank of Ireland (BoI) executives are in receipt of salaries of more than €400,000 a year, the Minister for Finance has said.
Michael Noonan also told the Dáil that 193 of the bank’s senior officials were on salaries of more than €150,000.
Eighty four have annual pay of between €150,000 and €199,000 and a further 66 are earning up to €299,000and 19 receive annual wages of between €300,000 and €399,000.
The revelation follows confirmation this week that another top executive at the former Anglo Irish Bank will receive a pay package of more than €500,000.
He becomes the seventh official at the State-owned bank, now known as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) on such a salary.
But Mr Noonan said at least one “high-profile pensioner” at AIB had made a significant contribution after the bank’s chief executive David Duffy wrote to all such pensioners, asking them to voluntarily return part of their payments.
The Minister said “week after week, people right across the public service are yielding up part of their emoluments to the State”.
He knew this because “I have to sign the acceptance order when the money is given to the exchequer”.
Since the economic crash many people had retired from financial institutions and “they are subject to moral persuasion”.
He said the Government shared the public’s outrage at salary levels but the scope “for action to claw back or reduce such entitlements is limited due to constitutional and legal reasons”.
However, Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty accused the Government of “fake outrage” and said it was unacceptable to have such salaries at institutions in which the State has a share.
Mr Doherty, who asked about pay rates at Bank of Ireland, said “it is time to wake up. The country is broke and the Minister cannot afford to pay someone a basic salary of €500,000 out of taxpayers’ money.”
He added that Mr Noonan “will ask people within three weeks to take more pain, despite the fact that they did not cause the crisis and yet somehow he justifies bankers receiving pay packets of €500,000 under his watch”.
But rejecting the claims of fake anger, Mr Noonan said AIB’s chief executive had imposed pay cuts on staff “at many levels”.
Earlier Mr Noonan told Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath he had written to the chairman of the IBRC some time ago asking him to get the bank’s board to impose a 15 per cent pay cut on all staff.
He received a reply that the board “did not think it wise to take that course of action” but he insisted “that is only the first exchange of correspondence and we will pursue the issue further”.
