It's just as well that salary increases at First Active aren't linked to the performance of the bank's share price. Otherwise John Smyth (since departed), Tony Shanahan and Paul Reville would have surely been looking at a pay cut last year rather than the 22 per cent rise in basic salaries that the banks' remuneration committee so generously awarded them.

The three executives picked up combined basic salaries of £590,000 (€749,150) last year compared to £485,000 in 1998. All right, they got no bonus at all last year compared to the £295,000 they got in 1998 - but it's still difficult to fathom how such a horrendous performance could warrant such a generous rise in basic pay.

And who is responsible for such generosity - and indeed the £790,000 severance package agreed with John Smyth when he quit last January? Stand up the remuneration committee - Dick Milliken, John Callaghan, Brian Wilson and Noel Whelan.

Any shareholder who feels aggrieved at this generosity can of course go to the First Active a.g.m. and kick up a fuss. Shareholders, mark the Burlington Hotel at 11 a.m. on May 16th in your diaries.

Dominic Coyle is at dcoyle@irish-times.ie