AIB golden handshake - €3m pay-off ends idea of social unity

IMAGINE if you are a public sector worker trying to support a family and maybe give your children a good education on something around €35,000 a year.

Imagine also that you are being asked to embrace considerable change under the Croke Park deal or face more pay cuts and you read that one man, former managing director of Allied Irish Banks, Colm Doherty got a pay package worth more than €3 million last year.

Imagine if you were the parent of a child who had come alive, blossomed like you never dared dream they might, because their school was able to meet their special needs but may not next year because of cuts and you read that Mr Doherty was paid €432,000 for 10 months’ work.

Imagine if you are struggling, since you or your partner lost a job, since interest rates started climbing, to pay for the roof over your family’s head and you read that Mr Doherty got a go-away €707,000 in lieu of a year’s notice after AIB was told to end his contract by then finance minister Brian Lenihan.

Imagine you’ve just come home from the airport after your son or daughter left with your lovely grandchildren — maybe for years — to try to live with hope and possibility in Australia and you read that Mr Doherty got the bones of €2m more on top of all that as a contribution to his already fabulous pension.

Imagine you’ve worked for decades building a nest egg or a pension to see it evaporate, turn to dust, even though you entrusted it to Mr Doherty and his peers who still insist on being repaid the money they entrusted to you in what now seems a lifetime ago.

So, after reading about Mr Doherty’s great good fortune, how do you feel about the idea of social unity, the great mantras of common purpose, the booming calls to patriotic endeavour and the transparent reassurances that we’re all in this terrible mess together?

Patronised? Cheated? Lied to? Betrayed? Treated with contempt? A very angry fool? All of the above and much more?

You are not by any means alone and our Government is putting social stability and Ireland’s relatively passive response to the economic crisis in jeopardy if this kind of immoral feather-bedding is left unchallenged.

If even one instance of this kind of aggrandised, self-important, self-interested, insider dealing is sanctioned on this Government’s watch then all of the moral authority needed to reform our politics and public service will have been squandered. Not only that but the bewildered chorus demanding that we “burn the bondholders” will be re-energised and in some small way vindicated.

Mr Doherty is not the first executive or senior public servant to be able to console themselves about their loss of position by considering their bank balance but it must end now because it is immoral that someone so close to the collapse of our economy should be so handsomely rewarded when everyone else is facing a new, straitened reality.

Mr Doherty will not be the last bank executive to be removed by the new owners — the State — but he must be the very last one to be rewarded as if his time in office was a success rather than a disaster.

No matter what the contracts these people hold say, they must face the consequences of the disaster they helped create. Enough...