Sir, - I notice that you refer to the AIB buying a 25 per cent stake in a Singapore bank ("AIB goes east", Editorial, June 2nd). In 1985 AIB went west, bought ICI and lost 20 per cent of its equity in a gamble. The then government got AIB out of jail in that one and we the taxpayers are still repaying their debt. Now that AIB is making enormous profits, should not the gurus who advise these banks turn their attention to repaying the taxpayer the money we lent them in 1985, plus interest? - Yours, etc., Eugene O`Connor,
Berkeley Street, Dublin 7.