From the crash to tracker mortgages and everything in between, the committee unquestionably wins the moral point. But in practice, there is little in its report to address or counter the sector’s abiding issue with the caps around talent retention.
Naturally, members of the committee disagree. Speaking at the report’s launch in Leinster House, McGuinness described the notion that the chief executive of an Irish bank could be paid in excess of €1 million as “obscene”. Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty, meanwhile, said there was some data to suggest that pay and bonuses were not the main motivating force behind senior departures at Irish banks. Labour’s Alice Mary Higgins said banks need to strengthen their own talent pipelines to help fill in the gaps.
Again, it is not difficult to agree with the members. But in a fiercely competitive European market for talent, particularly in Ireland with its high concentration of foreign multinationals, the commercial realities are plain to see. To counter those arguments, much more fundamental questions about the Irish banking sector would have to be asked.