SEANAD REPORT:THE GOVERNMENT should fire Bank of Ireland chief executive Richie Boucher if he did not return the €1.5 million bonus to his pension fund, Shane Ross (Ind) said. He did not accept the Government's contention that they could do nothing.

They had been effective in removing Mr Boucher’s predecessor as well as the chairman of BoI and the chief executive and the chairman of AIB.

“In effect, we own the Bank of Ireland. The Government can dictate who is on the board and, by extension, they can dictate who the chief executive is.”

This individual would be getting a payment which would give him an annual pension of €350,000-plus. The Government could not wash their hands of this matter.

Dan Boyle (GP), deputy Seanad leader said there was a universal feeling that payments made in some of the financial institutions were unwarranted and mechanisms should be found to retract some of the money, if possible, through taxation. Pension pots of a certain size should be taxed at a punitive rate. That would get the necessary signal across as quickly as possible.

Joe O’Toole (Ind) said chief executives of every semi-State body had similar rights to a bonus, but as far as he knew they had all voluntarily forgone them this year. Moral pressure should be applied to deal with what was happening in financial institutions.

Ronan Mullen (Ind) criticised the taking, without debate, of a motion to approve the placing of the Press Council on a statutory basis. He had been pressing for some time for a debate on media standards.

Jim Walsh (FF) said he was supporting the motion out of duty to the whip rather than out of any sense of conviction about it. The tabloid influence of the media in this country had been enormous. There was a lack of objectivity and a huge prejudice in the media.

Seanad leader Donie Cassidy said there was a huge balance gap in the media. The public must be told the positives as well as the negatives.