IBRC tops the list for top earners in State-owned banks

Of all the State-covered institutions for which information is available, IBRC (formerly Anglo) has – proportionately - by far the largest number of staff earning €100,000 a year or more. By Eadaoin O'Sullivan.

143 employees at State owned IBRC are earning €100,000 or more a year, according to information released in the Dáil to Fianna Fáil Finance Spokesman Michael McGrath.

At State-owned AIB, 861 employees are earning €100,000 or more, while at Permanent TSB the figure stands at 61. Bank of Ireland has yet to supply the information requested by McGrath.

According to its Annual Report for 2011, IBRC employed 1,186 people as of December 2011. Assuming no major change in staffing levels in the five months since, the figures released today indicate that some 12% of IBRC employees earn €100,000 a year or more. This ‘basic salary’ figure does not include other elements of the remuneration package, including pension contributions, subscriptions, health insurance and company cars.

By comparison, 5.9% of employees at ‘pillar bank’ AIB earn upwards of €100,000 (total staff numbers in AIB as at December 2011 stood at 14,501) while the smaller PTSB offers 2.7% of staff basic salaries of €100,000 or more. Total staff numbers at PTSB as at 27 February 2012 stood at 2,243.

Total personnel costs at AIB in 2011 stood at €935m. The cost of paying 804 individuals basic salaries of €100,000; 45 individuals €200,000, and 12 individuals €300,000 – assuming all those individuals were paid at the lower level (the figures are presented as ranges - €100,000-€199,000, etc.) – is €93m, or 10% of AIB’s total personnel costs. (Assuming these individuals were paid at the mid-range - €150,000; €250,000; €350,000 - gives a figure of 14.5%.)

Performing the same calculations for IBRC we find that 143 (12%) of its employees accounted for 16.35% of total staff costs – at the lower level – or 22.99% - at the mid-range.

Last year, IBRC chief executive Mike Aynsley earned a basic salary of €500,000, which was topped up with a pension contribution of €125,000, a car allowance of €38,000 and temporary allowances (‘temporary relocation assistance which includes rent, travel and other agreed expenses’) of €203,000 to bring his total remuneration to €866,000.

Last month, Michael Noonan told the Dáil (in a written answer) that 24 individuals at AIB were earning over €250,000 – prompting Fianna Fáil’s Eamon Ó Cuív to say “the Government must now move as quickly as legally possible to ensure that the public service pay cap is enforced at AIB, and make sure that any new entrants don’t earn beyond that public service pay cap.”

A pay cap of €250,000 at semi-State companies and of €200,000 in the public sector is currently in place.

In 2009 – the latest year for which figures are available – 4.06% of all public sector workers earned in excess of €100,000. {jathumbnailoff}

Number of employees with basic salaries  

AIB

PTSB

IBRC

>€100,000 -

<€199,000

804

52

119

>€200,000 -

<€299,000

45

7

16

>€300,000

12

2

8