Reaction: The Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority must immediately investigate AIB's operations following the disclosure of the fourth example of irregular conduct, Fine Gael charged last night.
Rather "than a constant drip-feed", IFSRA should carry out a full "health-check" on the bank, said Fine Gael TD Mr Richard Bruton. "Public confidence in the financial sector and in AIB in particular will continue to suffer until such a report is made public," he said.
The bank's internal rules must be examined, he said. "The key voice at this stage is now IFSRA, and this voice must be heard. There is no point in having a dog and barking," said Mr Bruton.
Demanding to know the seniority of the executives under investigation by the bank, Labour Party TD Ms Joan Burton said the AIB statement released last night was "wholly inadequate".
"It is clear, once again, that a culture of tax avoidance, involving the use of offshore accounts and trusts permeated to the highest levels of AIB.
"It is simply not good enough for the bank's management to go public with very limited information on practices that developed among senior staff in relation to one particular offshore investment vehicle.
"The public will want to know an awful lot more about the bank's internal investigations in general. Ordinary taxpayers are sick to the teeth by now of the dripfeed of revelations over the past number of years about offshore accounts, Ansbacher, Jersey the NIB," she said.
Green Party TD Mr Dan Boyle said the bank's internal investigation had revealed "serious malpractices at its highest levels of management".
"The fact that a group of senior staff could develop a system for their own benefit and obviously believe that such practices would go undetected says an awful lot about the culture of tax avoidance which existed at the highest management levels of AIB," he said.
The latest series of difficulties in the bank has only highlighted the need for proper regulation and "only serves to indicate that IFSRA is still not the independent watchdog so clearly needed in the banking sector," he added.
Sinn Féin TD Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said every day now seems "to bring new revelations about how AIB has ripped off its customers, that it has been doing so for many years, and that it has done so with impunity".
"What action will the Government now take to strengthen consumer protection and to combat this form of white-collar crime?" he asked.
