Madam, – I believe that contracts drawn up in 2008 should be honoured and bonuses should be paid to the staff at AIB.
AIB has benefited from the time and effort of their staff on the understanding that such bonuses would be paid – and particularly at this precarious time the banks need to hold on to the staff that they value.
I’m not in the industry myself but I think if someone chooses to work in the financial sector under agreed terms we can’t begrudge them that fact – it’s the industry and the top management as a whole that is at fault, rather than the individual employees. If my employer tried to reduce my salary and benefits retrospectively I would be livid.
All the Government can do is put legal mechanisms in place now to ensure that they have control over bonuses at the bailed-out banks in future. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Nowhere have I seen it mentioned that AIB meekly paid out bonuses to employees overseas while at the same deferring those for employees resident in Ireland. Whether it’s a case of our Government pandering to senior bondholders abroad or AIB paying staff on foreign shores their bonuses without demur, one wonders why the Irish are so keen to placate foreigners.
If there was less of an urge to be liked by others, maybe we might not find ourselves in our current predicament. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The AIB bonus affair demonstrates that AIB is run by a board with utter contempt for the Irish public and raises questions which need to be answered.
Did any member of the senior management or the board of AIB stand to benefit from the €40 million bonus payout? Why did the board decide to extend the bonus payments to €40 million, which covered a larger group of bank employees? Did public interest director Dick Spring approve of the board decision to make the bonus payments and if he did not agree then why did he not resign?
In response to public anger Brian Linehan has intervened, but the whole affair stinks and our elite having bankrupted the State continue to pilfer from the citizens who rescued them – utterly disgusting behaviour. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – If we as taxpayers want AIB and Bank of Ireland to return to profitability, it will be necessary for someone with backbone to stand up to the witch hunt currently being waged against AIB for paying performance-related bonuses to members of its staff who are making a contribution to returning the bank to profitability.
Demonising the process of rewarding high performers with bonuses may be politically popular, but it will drive the brightest talent out of the country to banks in London and Frankfurt. This in turn will lead to critical parts of the Irish banks where motivated talent translates into profit being populated by pen-pushers. As a result of this policy the banks will take much longer to return to profitability and they will remain in public ownership for years to come. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Whilst not condoning the payment of bank bonuses to AIB executives within the capital market division, one must remember that it is a division that returned profits in the teeth of economic recession (albeit probably on the back of selling Irish bonds).
I do condemn the populist rhetoric of Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan in his stance on this issue.
Could the Minister explain the difference between the AIB executives and the following: Patrick Neary, Roddy Molloy, and Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern?
Haven’t they all contributed to the catastrophic collapse in the Irish economy, a collapse so dramatic that we as a nation are the equivalent of our bank system: bankrupt and rotten to the core?
To add insult to injury the Minister saw fit to pay bonuses to staff within the Department of Finance. This department has been proved deficient in its guidance of government through the property boom and through the recession. This deficiency largely stems from a lack of qualified personnel within that department sufficient to give the proper guidance when required. I wonder were these bonuses the 30 pieces of silver required to cover up the gross incompetence of our Government?– Yours, etc,
Madam, – May I extend my congratulations to Sean Doorley (December 15th), of Birr Co Offaly, for finally discovering something to which we owe this Government credit. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Are these civil service finance officials who are in receipt of bonuses (Breaking News, December 15th) the same officials who incurred only a 3 per cent cut in salary (because of withdrawn bonuses) while other public service employees incurred a cut of approximately 15 per cent?
Are these the officials who devised the allowances cuts? Are these the officials who propose the retention of a €200,000 tax free retirement lump sum (of particular interest to higher civil servants and politicians)? Are these the officials who have helped devise the current “bailout” plan? Where is our Minister’s wrath now? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – When I first started my professional career in the private sector, it was widely known that if you did not do a good job, you did not get a bonus.
This obviously does not translate to the public sector or to the banks.
Since when does bringing a country to its knees classify as a good job? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – As someone familiar with a capital markets/trading environment I thought I would take a stab at painting the other side of the AIB bonus story. First off we need to explain how a trader earns a bonus.
When a bank hires a trader, it enters into a contract whereby the trader is paid a nominal salary, and then generally a percentage of any profits they generate through their trading activities. So for example, if you get a 10 per cent cut of trading profits, and you generate €1 million in profit, your bonus will be €100,000. As a trader, if you lose money for the bank, your bonus is zero. Now if I’m a trader in AIB, I had no control over the banks property lending business, all I know is that I made money for the bank, and as such I am due my cut based on my contract. And in a socially democratic country, based on the principals of free market enterprise, contracts are king – if not, well then lets just raise the red flag and call ourselves communist Ireland. Let me add that being a trader isn’t your cushy nine-to-five type job – more often that not, you choose a life of 15 to 16 hour high-stress days, including weekends, constantly under pressure to produce, where you are never really away from the job and may only see your children awake for an hour a day during the working week. It’s a high reward, but also high burnout career.
Second, for Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to come out and say paying these bonuses is “ galling” – well that’s all well and good for the person whose regulations, or lack thereof, led to this entire crisis in the first place. Quite convenient indeed for the Minister to now be seen as protector of the greater good – what a joke!
Finally, I don’t know the people at AIB who are due these bonuses, but I imagine most of them are hard working individuals with families to support like anyone else – they had a contract to earn a living by providing their labour just like a plumber or carpenter, and as such they expect to be paid. And just because they make €100,000 or €200,000, doesn’t make them bad people, nor should they be ashamed to make that much, just because the average salary is €40,000.
I’d warrant not one of these bank employees is happy that it is taking tax-payer money to pay them their due, but their compensation is a legally earned liability of the bank, just like the ESB bill, the accountants’ fees and the legal fees. Should the bank have to pay those bills but not their own employees? – Yours, etc,