AIB gets a ‘free pass’ on €21bn it owes us

The EU has put no legal requirement on AIB to repay the €21bn in bailout funds it has received from Irish taxpayers.

In the restructuring document published by the Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission, it stipulates that AIB will have to pay the Government excess capital it is holding above legal requirements at the end of December 2016. This is unlikely to be more than a few hundred million euro.

AIB has received just under €21bn in state aid from the Government since 2009. Michael Noonan, the finance minister, holds 99.8% of the common equity in the bank as well as €3.5bn in preference shares and €1.6bn of contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds.