Three million for a year’s toil: nice work if you can get it.

I don’t really listen to “Liveline”, but radio reception in some parts of Connemara is so bad that all you’re left with is long wave, and neither my father nor I are confident enough in our ability to speak German or Russian to listen to their talk programmes. RTÉ Radio 1 it was, then, and the chance to hear the public “talk to Joe”.

Anyway, the hot topic of the day was the huge payout to the former managing director of AIB, Colm Doherty, who was forced to resign from the role barely a year after starting following the effective nationalisation of the bank by the Irish government. For his troubles, Mr. Doherty walked away with the €432,000 he had earned for twelve months work, together with a further €707,000 in compensation for having to leave the post a year early. He also managed to receive a further €2 million in lieu of a contribution to a pension fund. The news comes seven days after the bank announced plans to make as many as 2,000 staff redundant over the next two years, following a €10.4 BILLION loss in 2010.

Naturally, the predominant mood of the callers was of incredulity, while unrelenting anger featured strongly too. For many, it was deemed to be the final straw, the latest in a chain of events which would be comical, were the situation not so serious. This reaction was all the more reasonable given that, in the same programme, a caller phoned in to say that he and his co-workers were about to lose their jobs and that they were not going to be offered compensation. It was all the more poignant given the realisation among workers in their forties or fifties that they were highly unlikely to ever get another job.

The overarching thought which went through my head as I listened to call after call expressing outrage and frustration at the generous package donated by the taxpayer was to wonder what exactly the directors at a nationalised bank do, especially to earn such large sums of cash which the bank itself doesn’t possess. I have to plead ignorance, because the total sum of my knowledge of banking executives consists of watching Milburn Drysdale repeatedly suck up to the Clampetts in “The Beverly Hillbillies”. The Clampetts seemed to be his only customers; perhaps the role of a director is to hang out with oil-rich bumpkins. What exactly do these guys do that justifies the huge sums of money they get from their employers?

In any service or industry, the person at the top has a clear role, and often has a personal interest in ensuring that the company they’re in charge of stays in business. Since AIB, together with pretty much every other Irish bank, have managed to plummet from confident solvency to junk status in less than four years, one has to query what exactly AIB bosses did to earn the type of contract signed by Mr Doherty when he was promoted to the position of managing director.

The Minister for Justice, Defence and Equality, Alan Shatter, speaking at the annual Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors conference in Limerick, noted that AIB had effectively gone into liquidation, and therefore the directors might not be eligible to receive a bonus. This would be an interesting change of opinion, since his Cabinet colleague, Michael Noonan, had claimed 24 hours previously that nothing could be done about contracts which had no mention of the consequences over the decline of Irish banks.

As welcome as Mr Shatter’s comments were, the reality is that we won’t see that three million returned, unless Mr Doherty feels a pang of guilt for taking a seven-figure sum from a bank he helped deliver into government ownership which lost over ten billion while he was the head honcho. Nothing illegal occurred and the government can’t introduce a retroactive premium tax, so only a willing contribution from the goodness of Mr Doherty’s heart will see any of that money returned. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, nor would I expect to hear any statement coming from him beyond an attempt to justify that the money was a fair compensation for his work at AIB.

This is really the tip of (yet another) iceberg, because this raises a number of questions which probably won’t get any proper answers outside of a tribunal of enquiry into the banking disaster. First, Mr Doherty got €707,000 in place of a year’s notice: is it normal to get a year’s notice? The only justification for that is that it would normally take a year to find a replacement, which seems rather implausible. Second, who agreed this contract with Mr Doherty, and who signed off on it? How much did the Department of Finance, and the last government, know about this arrangement, given that the State was already a large shareholder when the contract was agreed?

Who else has such generous contracts, in AIB and in other Irish banks? Mr Doherty was only the managing director; how much did the bank’s chairman, Dan O’Connor, get when he was forced to resign at the same time? Finally, why did the Government agree to Mr Doherty’s promotion to the position in the first place? The Government wanted someone from outside the bank’s hierarchy to take charge, the Bank insisted on Mr Doherty.

Given that Mr Doherty had been a major official in the bank for a number of years and therefore had much input into the bank’s dealings over the years leading up to the financial crisis, was he really the best candidate for the job? It seems even in the midst of the worst financial crisis in Ireland’s history, the ones responsible are still looking after themselves. It’s shameful that while AIB is planning to cut 2,000 ordinary staff from the payroll, one man is able to take away €3 million that his employer doesn’t even possess. Those callers to “Liveline” have good reason to be angry at the latest news from the bank, just wait for the rage when the amounts paid to other officials are released once the bank’s annual report is published shortly.