Noonan asked for Anglo pay cut in April
The board of what is now Irish Bank Resolution Corporation rejected the plea to cut senior staff wages by 15% last April.
The finance minister urged the nationalised bank’s chief, Alan Dukes, to bring pay levels down in line with salary cuts imposed in the public service.
Mr Noonan said he would continue to push the issue with the bank.
“My position is that although they have legal authority to set pay scales — there’s a public interest as well. We will continue to push that as well,” Mr Noonan told the Dáil finance committee.
Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman, Pearse Doherty, said Mr Dukes had effec-tively “put two fingers up” to the Government.
The admission came as generous pay and pension packages at the bank continued to provoke political uproar. Opposition parties demanded the Government take action to intervene in the situation after it emerged six IBRC executives earned annual salary packages of €500,000, with 36 other employees being paid more than €200,000.
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore described the pay levels at the bank as “unacceptable” and said the Government has appointed consultants to advise on how wage levels at IBRC can be reduced.
Mr Gilmore said consulting firm Mercer was probing what action could be taken.
Mr Gilmore said Fianna Fáil was responsible for the contracts that allowed such large salaries at the bailed-out bank.
Last night IBRC said it would not be making any further comments about pay levels. A spokesperson referred to Mr Dukes’s response to a parliamentary question about Mr Noonan’s requests for a 15% pay cut at the institution.
Mr Dukes said this request had been turned down by the board because there had been a 20% pay cut after nationalisation and the bank did not pay bonuses. Maintaining existing pay levels was critical to retaining the skilled staff needed to run down operations successfully between now and 2020, he added.
United Left Alliance TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the bankers involved were “a golden circle insulated from the impact of austerity”.
Mr Doherty said that bailed-out bankers were “living in a bubble” as he attacked Mr Dukes’s response to the Government.
“This is a two-fingered gesture to the taxpayer from senior management and executive board members in IBRC. It is outrageous that the minister has not followed this up and demanded a reduction, considering the Irish taxpayer is the sole owner of this bank. It is even more outrageous that the board would turn it down.
“The minister and the Government need to immediately intervene in the level of salaries given out at this bank and remind these senior executives exactly who they are working for.”
It emerged last week that IBRC chief Mike Aynsley’s pay package totals €663,000, taking in a €500,000 salary, allowances of €38,000 and a pension sum of €125,000.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has insisted that action cannot be taken against former bankers at AIB who have retired with large pension settlements because of the way their contracts were drawn up.
