Any doubts that this Government is totally out of touch with people facing a dire cost-of-living crisis were dispelled by the decision to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe’s plan to scrap the €500,000 limit on annual executive salaries and allow bonuses of up to €20,000 would be controversial at any time.
But when more than one million people are unable to make ends meet and put food on the table it is an outrage and an insult to the taxpayers who have bailed out these rogue institutions.
Read More: Lifting restrictions on banking 'bonanza pay and bonuses' slammed as 'galling'
The mind boggles as to why the Government decided to gift bankers an early Christmas present at a time when tens of thousands of families are turning to St Vincent de Paul to help pay for food.
The move has even provoked criticism from some Fine Gael backbenchers who are worried about the optics of looking after the very well off when even workers on good wages are struggling to cope.
The TDs also fear that the decision will play into the hands of Sinn Fein and they are dead right. They will find it hard to explain why a Fine Gael minister is bursting a gut to reinstate bankers’ bonuses when many HSE staff who worked through the pandemic are still waiting on the promised €1,000 bonus.
The claim that the lifting of the cap is needed because salary constraints make it difficult for the banks to retain top talent is laughable. Talent for what? Charging their customers the highest mortgage interest rates in Europe while giving savers no interest on their savings?
And what geniuses at AIB thought it would be a good idea to make 70 branches cashless leaving whole swathes of rural Ireland without access to their money and a range of other services?
Another excuse given by ministers for funnelling more cash to already highly-paid executives is the claim the banking landscape has dramatically changed.
They obviously forget that it was only last July that AIB tried to go cashless totally against the wishes of its customers.
And as recently as September of this year Bank of Ireland was fined a record €100.5million for its role in the tracker mortgage scandal, which resulted in massive losses for borrowers and an industry-wide loss of 327 homes.
Three months earlier AIB and its EBS subsidiary were hit with a then record €96.7million fine for their part in what has been described as Ireland’s biggest ever fraud. So much for a changed landscape.
In recent months the Financial Services Union, which represents bank workers, revealed bankers were doing everything in their power to prevent the public from using actual cash. In a submission to the retail banking review, the FSU said banks are failing personal customers and small firms and using “sneaky” tactics to force the public to use online banking and cards.
The Union claimed banks are actively engaged in moving people away from cash payments and making it difficult for the public to use bank branches.
And if senior bankers need a salary of more than €500,000 to do their job efficiently, why are other workers such as gardai, teachers and nurses expected to work efficiently for a fraction of that sum?
Are they not also entitled to big bonuses for doing what they are being paid to do? What’s so special about bankers, apart from the fact they were involved in all kinds of skulduggery including mass fraud and money laundering?
Isn’t it also amazing how this Government can remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses but can’t put a cap on rents or a proper ban on evictions?
We should never forget that the reason limits were put on bankers’ pay is because the country’s financial institutions helped wreck the economy forcing taxpayers to bail out all of the country’s largest lenders.
The austerity following the crash which saw mass unemployment and emigration are a direct result of the recklessness of the banks and the country is still living with the legacy of that lost decade.
Lest we forget that the “talent” that headed banks then were paid huge salaries and justified them by claiming that if we paid peanuts we’d get monkeys. We paid them millions and still got monkeys.
If we’ve learned anything from past scandals it’s we never learn lessons and the outgoing Finance Minister has proved that point.
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