Current Account didn't have the pleasure of attending the First Active a.g.m. this week but, having listened to John Callaghan on RTE's business news that evening, one can only question whether the First Active chairman/chief executive is on the same planet as his longsuffering shareholders.

Whether or not the show of hands on the re-election of directors was clear or not, it would have gone a long way towards mending fences with his shareholders if Callaghan had agreed simply to count the votes on the hall. By not doing so and by dismissing any criticism of the First Active board, Mr Callaghan simply reinforced the public view that First Active directors are out of touch. Not hard to see why Drury's quit the PR job at First Active.

This column criticised the First Active flotation before, during and after the deed was done, as a flotation that was not required and which gave questionable one-off windfalls for mortgage holders who had to endure among the highest interest rates on the Irish market.

Back then, we said that the only real beneficiaries of the flotation was First Active management. Shareholders who have seen the value of their shares sink like a stone since then at least have the consolation of knowing that the lavish share options the First Active board awarded its management are now worthless.

The proposed merger with Anglo Irish is analysed in detail elsewhere in this newspaper. But Current Account well remembers radio advertisements from Anglo Irish in recent times which spoke glowingly of the absence of any expensive branch network to maintain and how Anglo was probably the lowest-cost bank in the State. So what has changed to make the likes of First Active - a high cost bank operating in a ferociously competitive mortgage market - so attractive.

The detail of the planned merger may become public as early as today but Anglo Irish shareholders - for whom this link-up has questionable merit - will hopefully look at the proposals in detail before they sign on the dotted line to merge with First Active.

First Active's own shareholders will no doubt flock to accept any deal which offers them a flicker of hope but Anglo Irish shareholders should be absolutely certain of the merits of the merger before they dig the First Active board out of the hole they have dug for themselves.

They might also ask (as seems to be the case) whether there is any case for John Callaghan rather than Tony O'Brien to become chairman of the merged bank. Quite frankly, apart from bringing somebody with retail banking experience onto the board of the merged bank - Richard Hoare being the obvious candidate - Current Account sees little added value that any of the First Active board would bring to the merged entity.

One hopes that Chris Reilly at BIAM, Ann Powell at Eagle Star and John Lawrie at Aberdeen Asset Managers - the three biggest Irish shareholders - will ask the required hard questions of Sean FitzPatrick and his colleagues.