Ireland's top bankers were paid an average of €1.4 million last year, with bonuses exceeding caps set to take effect next year, according to the European Union banking regulator.

Some 17 bankers in Ireland were paid an average of more than €1.2 million each in 2012, with 10 investment bankers and three retail bankers earning more than €1.4 million each.

The 17 highest-paid bankers in the Ireland had an average bonus-to-salary ratio of 235 per cent, according to the European Banking Authority survey of EU finance workers who earn more than €1 million a year.

The EU brokered a deal in February to outlaw banker bonuses that are more than twice fixed pay. The rules are scheduled to take effect next year.

The EBA said any banker paid more than €500,000 should be covered by the new rules capping bonuses.

The European Banking Authority survey showed 3,529 bankers in Europe earned €1 million or more last year, including 2,714 in Britain, which had 12 times as many high earners as any other country.

Bankers in Europe were paid €6.6 billion in aggregate last year, including €5 billion in bonuses, representing more than 10 per cent of the EU bank industry’s after-tax profits in 2012.

Senior retail bankers in Spain were better paid than their investment banking colleagues, and were the highest-earning in Europe in 2012, making an average of €2.2 million a year, according to the survey. That’s compared to €1.7 million for investment bankers there.

In France and Germany, the top investment bankers earned around €1.5 million each on average, while the 47 bankers in Italy that qualified for the study made around €1.6 million a year.

In France, the average bonus-to-salary ratio was 495 per cent, while it was 370 per cent in the UK.

Additional reporting Bloomberg