O Cuív asks bank chief to return €1.5m pension top-up

SOCIAL Protection Minister Éamon O Cuív has asked the chief executive of Bank of Ireland to hand back a €1.5 million pension top-up he was given last year.

Mr O Cuív said the Government did not have the legal power to force the chief executive, Richie Boucher, to give back the award. However, he said it should not have been accepted given the state of the public finances.

Mr O Cuív said that were he in Mr Boucher’s position he would volunteer to hand back the money.

“I cannot understand how him (Mr Boucher) and other people who had very good contracts... but, when everything came out, made a mess of our banks and our economy; I cannot understand how they are not voluntarily, even if they have legal rights, handing back some of what they have,” he said.

The new Social Protection Minister was speaking on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics.

Earlier, Mr Boucher had defended the payout in a Sunday newspaper.

“I am keenly aware of the public’s reaction. However, the position is that my contract changed and my pension fund needed to be funded. That is a matter between the pension fund and the company,” he said.

The top-up will allow Mr Boucher, who was made chief executive last year, to retire aged 55 with a pension worth €367,570 a year.

There were was an angry reaction to the revelations regarding this deal.

Speaking at the close of his party’s annual conference in NUI Galway, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said his colleagues would raise the issue in the Dáil this week.

And Mr Gilmore said he believed Finance Minister Brian Lenihan had the power to demand the pension top-up was returned.

“He has the legal power to do so. Because in the legislation that was introduced as part of the whole banking set-up the Minister for Finance does have the power to give directions to the banks and to determine pay,” he said.

Mr Gilmore also said the pay-freezes and salary caps in the public sector should be extended to the banks, given the level of state ownership in the institutions.

“Given the level of investment and ownership the state has in the banks, the issue that comes into play here (are the) the rules that govern pay in the broader state sector and the banks can’t be outside that arrangement,” he said.