Bank directors - Why didn’t they block €1.5m deal?

IT’S probably expecting too much of the banks’ public interest directors to be thorns in the side of the culture that blithely stumped up the €1.5 million pension top-up for Bank of Ireland boss Richie Boucher.

It’s probably expecting too much to imagine that they might react as any rational member of the public — otherwise known as the taxpayer who saved the banks — when faced with rapacious greed dressed up as “compensation” and say “no” loudly and publicly. What a cheer they would get.

This is especially so when Taoiseach Brian Cowen can declare, with a straight face, that no one told him that things were, when he was finance minister, a bit off colour at Irish Nationwide. If Mr Cowen imagines that this pathetic, mental-reservation defence is anything other than offensive, then he’s put his foot in it one more time.