Godfrey's Gospel: Are banking bosses really worth their whopping salaries?

I GOT a little surprise the other day – my bank gave me a refund. OK, I didn’t actually receive a gift as such – after all, a refund is really the return of your own money – but nevertheless it was a welcome boost to the often-stretched bank balance.

Just to clarify: it wasn’t a massive refund (the exact amount was €44.90), but I didn’t say no and later that day didn’t mind tapping for a couple of purchases, fooling myself that it was really money which had been ‘gifted’ to me.

Then I go and read about the money some of our banking executives are getting, and my mere €44.90 became totally insignificant. But, more importantly, it got me thinking about why these individuals think they are worth such huge pay packets.

Now that AIB is no longer under the control of the government, I wonder how long it will take for current senior management to give themselves huge pay rises – far more than any of the rest of us will enjoy.

If they are looking just for parity with Bank of Ireland, they will be rubbing their hands. The CEO of Bank of Ireland is paid a basic salary of €950,000 – yes, that figure is correct – as well as additional benefits such as pension and performance-related bonuses.

The poor old CEO of AIB, who until now has been under state ownership, must make do with a basic salary of €500,000, which includes pension and performance-related bonuses, which is even less than what the chief financial officer of Bank of Ireland gets ‒ €600,000.

Can you see any scenario where AIB will continue to pay their top executives half of what their colleagues next door get? I don’t.

Can you just imagine sitting back knowing that come the end of the year, your take home package will more than likely double to €2,740 a DAY, 365 days of the year, not to mention the other benefits that go with the job?

I don’t wish to sound jealous; I believe if that’s what some people can squeeze out of an organisation, then good for them, but it must be a bitter bill for the rest of the organisation to swallow, bearing in mind pay scales in the banking sector are nothing to write home about.

Entry-level bank tellers can expect to earn between €26,000-€31,000 a year, bank managers from €50,000 to €55,000, risk managers from €55,000 to €72,000 or thereabouts, and senior managers from over €80,000 to €120,000. Within that structure, there are also salary scales for the likes of data analysts, compliance managers, heads of division and so on, but whatever the troops on the ground earn, it is nothing like what those with offices on the top floor earn.

Mind you, I can never get my head around the fact that two of the busiest jobs (and certainly the most important ones as far as our democracy is concerned), taoiseach and tánaiste, don’t earn the colour of what our top bankers earn. In fact, their combined income barely reaches that of the AIB CEO and is only half that of the Bank of Ireland CEO.

Micheál Martin’s take-home pay as taoiseach is slightly under €250,000, while Simon Harris has to settle for about €20,000 less than that – both ridiculously low, as far as I am concerned.

Bear in mind, they are the ones who draft and spearhead the programme for government. OK, they may not be the ones to write down every word of it, but they are the ones who stand up in the Dáil to press ahead with it.

Like politicians or loathe them, it is what is drafted and presented to the Dáil that makes this country tick. Without a plan, government initiatives and incentives and any other word you wish to use, there would be no economy worth talking about, no jobs, no services, nothing.

Yet we complain if the people spearheading our government get a salary worthy of the job they are expected to do.

I know there will be some who say the government does nothing for them. Rubbish! Usually these are the ones who would stay in bed if they thought there was work to be had somewhere, who believe they are ‘entitled’ to everything without contributing anything to society except a loud mouth.

Even the president of this great little country, which is a figurehead role and has nothing to do with the day-to-day management of the country, gets more than the taoiseach.

The current office holder gets €250,000 – after Michael D gave himself a voluntary reduction of 23.5%. In other words, the job initially carried a salary of €325,000 a year.

Of course, a lot of people complain about the salaries, expenses and so-called ‘perks’ that our elected representatives get, irrespective of their job description, and yes, I would agree there are some who are little more than parish pump politicians who say a lot but deliver very little. However, there are also those who put in extremely long hours to get the job done, without getting the recognition or financial remuneration they deserve, and I have no doubt if they did decide to give themselves a pay rise there would be blue murder.

Maybe that’s why we cannot attract the right people to do the right job to fix matters like homelessness, lengthy waiting lists in our hospitals, a chronic shortage of houses, lack of oversight, value for money – need I go on?

Then again, I’m not saying our bankers did much better. They have the big pay cheques, but remember: both AIB and Bank of Ireland would have been dead in the water when the ‘Celtic Tiger’ died but for the state’s rescue package.