FURY was mounting last night as it emerged that Irish bankers will pocket multi-million pound bonuses after being bailed out by British taxpayers.
The Allied Irish Bank will hand out £34million in bonuses for its executives this month, despite being on the brink of another rescue package.
Britain stumped up £3.2billion to save Ireland from collapse last month as part of a £72.1billion European bail-out.
The handout comes at a time when millions of hard-pressed Britons are struggling with the Government’s austerity measures to reduce its own budget deficit.
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Irish opposition party Fine Gael yesterday called for the finance bill going through the Irish parliament to be amended to impose a 99 per cent supertax on the bonuses.
Barry O’Leary, the influential head of the Industrial Development Authority, called the decision to pay bonuses bizarre, and said the money would be better used to help repair the republic’s economy.
The bonuses were withheld in 2008 as part of the Irish government’s bank guarantee scheme. They are now being paid as a result of trader John Foy’s successful legal action against the bank, which resulted in it having to pay him a deferred bonus of £134,000.
As many as 90 employees in AIB’s capital markets division have issued similar legal proceedings, claiming the payouts were agreed before the economic crash. Last year staff at AIB received equal to £45million in bonuses.
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