State ‘no control’ over bank boss’s pay

The Government will not use its share in Bank of Ireland to oppose a €843,000 pay package for its boss, Richie Boucher, because to do so would be an “idle symbolic gesture” according to Finance Minister Michael Noonan.

He said the State’s share in the bank is 14%, so voting against a renewal of Mr Boucher’s remuneration at the bank’s forthcoming AGM “wouldn’t matter, because it’s going to go through anyway”.

He was responding to questions from Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty, who said it was an “obscene salary from a bank that has only been saved because of the sacrifices of the Irish taxpayers”.

Mr Noonan argued that the pay for Mr Boucher was agreed by his predecessor.

“I do not believe in gesture politics or idle symbolic gestures. The State has 14% of Bank of Ireland. How we vote on this issue at the AGM does not matter. It is going to go through anyway,” he said.

The minister said the signal it would send to international investors “has to be carefully considered” adding that he did not want to do anything that “would damage the reputation of Ireland internationally by seeming to interfere in a commercial entity”.

But Mr Doherty said: “Despite all the hardships endured by ordinary hard-working people across the State, this bank continues to show contempt for them in the way it deals with repossessions and legal letters and its obligation to provide credit to small and medium-sized enterprises.”

Mr Noonan was taking Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil because the Taoiseach was in London for the state visit of President Michael D Higgins.

The minister came under questioning over the Government’s handling of mortgage arrears, with the Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin, saying the “hands off approach” had left the future of thousands of families in jeopardy.

He said the different approaches of different banks means the outcome for mortgage holders depends on “pot luck”.

Mr Noonan responded that it is the Government’s objective to keep people in their family homes. But he said that “unless repossession is part of the legal system, there will be no mortgage market because nobody will lend unless there is legal potential to realise the collateral”.

Independent TD Stephen Donnelly criticised the selling of Irish Nationwide mortgages to Us firms, Loanstar and Oaktree, instead of allowing families to bid on their own mortgages.

“The Government has sold these men, women and children down the river,” he said. “These are people who could have refinanced their mortgages at whatever discount has been given to these US debt firms but now will not, and many will end up being evicted,” he said.