Strangely civilised meeting shows what a difference a year can make

FOR the 300 members of the Irish Nationwide who turned up at the building society’s annual general meeting yesterday many of them must have wondered if they were in the proper venue.

Normally a loud affair that tends to drag on for hours, the members who turned up got something different. Not only were there few wild outbursts from disgruntled borrowers, but several members asked pertinent questions.

It was a vastly different affair to last year's AGM, which last nearly six hours and at times lurched from heated debate to farce.