It's not just AIB that comes out of the Dana affair looking the worse for wear; the Pensions Board also seems to have engaged in a game of "dodge the blame".

The board is, I am sure, quite right in its assertion that it had no role in the supervision of investments by pension fund trustees.

It did say, however, that trustees were required to invest funds according to the "prudent man rule". Quite how that can cover a situation where one subsidiary of a company gets a fellow subsidiary of the same company to accept shares it is having difficulty selling - as has been alleged by Mr Tony Spollen, - is a mystery.

From the ordinary customer's point of view, it appears that another of the great secrets of the financial services sector - stuffing, as the above practice is apparently called - is finally in the open. Industry sources claim it was common in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In any case, according to the Irish Bank Officials Association, it appears its trustee members knew nothing of the purchase.

The issue is not whether Dana proved, in the end, to be a good or bad investment; it is that the practices engaged in at the time were questionable to say the least, even if - as AIB says - they involved no "notifiable offence".

If the Pensions Board did not have a role to play, it should have had. At least the Central Bank has since intervened to try to curb any such practice.