Tail wagging the dog

No matter how often you read the phrase “the bank will pay no taxes on its profits” it turns the knife anew.

Yet that is what the Oireachtas Finance Committee heard yesterday when it questioned the chief of the State-owned Permanent TSB, Jeremy Masding.

Mr Masding also refused — remember, this is a State-owned, State-rescued bank — to name the ultimate beneficial owner of Glenbeigh, the entity that will be the final beneficial owner when €1.3bn of mortgages are sold under a structure that facilitates a tax-free sale — using a so-called Section 110 company. The deal, he insisted, involved non-disclosure clauses.

How very convenient.

This raises two realities, one more depressing than the other. If our Government can’t control, in world banking terms, a Mickey Mouse outfit like Permanent TSB, how might it control bigger players it does not own?

The second reality is that the banks’ arrogance knows no bounds.