Ordinary AIB staff ‘being abused’ over €40m bonus

ORDINARY staff members in AIB are being wrongly subjected to “abuse, ridicule and anger” over the €40 million bonus to be paid next week.

General secretary of the Irish Banking Officials Association, Larry Broderick, said ordinary staff are not the beneficiaries of the bonus windfall and should not be subjected to abuse from the public.

“I can understand that anger, but it should not be vented at people who are at the coalface working with customers everyday.

“An impression has been created in the minds of many members of the general public that ordinary bank officials in AIB have shared in a massive bonus bonanza — and once again branch staff throughout Ireland are bearing the brunt of further unjustified abuse and demeaning comments from various quarters. The vast majority of staff in AIB have not benefited from any such payments,” he said.

Mr Broderick also said he was flabbergasted that the Government has only moved now to heavily tax bank bonus payments.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan announced on Thursday that all future bank bonuses would be subject to a 90% super tax, but that it would not apply to the €40m about to be paid to certain AIB staff

Speaking to RTÉ radio, taxation lawyer Suzanne Kelly stressed that, even with a change to the law, it was impossible to retrospectively tax bonuses.

“They are actually taxed in the exact same way as salary. If the law were to change in the morning, it could only affect bonuses that were earned in 2010. Bonuses earned in earlier tax years, such as in 2008 or prior to that, are taxed by the rules applied in 2008. We cannot change those rules.”

All Irish banks had been barred from making bonus payments under the Government’s bank guarantee scheme. However, Mr Lenihan confirmed that AIB, Bank of Ireland and Anglo Irish paid bonuses recently.

Bank of Ireland made payments to “a small number of people at middle-management level”, but refused to disclose the amounts for “commercial reasons”.

It said there were “limited instances” of pay increases relating to promotions, but that this amounted to less than 4% of the workforce.

Anglo Irish Bank also paid a 5% salary increase to all staff up to manager level in January 2010. Ten bonus payments were paid in 2009 with a further five this year.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of St Joseph’s Centre for the Visually Impaired, Brian Allen, called on the AIB staff due a bonus to donate some or all of their money to charities whose funding has been cut in the budget.