Tom Mulcahy, who emerged as one of the senior AIB executives who have 'tax issues', has resigned as Aer Lingus chairman. Tom Mulcahy retired after seven years at the top job in AIB and became chairman of Aer Lingus in August 2001.
His resignation letter was delivered to the Minister for Transport on Saturday who accepted it at lunchtime.
Mulcahy has emerged as one of two former and three current senior AIB executives who have 'tax issues' according to an investigation by the bank and IFSRA. Mulchay has previously stated that he is fully tax compliant.
The names of the former five former senior AIB executives who were beneficiaries of the offshore investment company, Faldor, also came into the public domain on Saturday.
They include former AIB Bank chief executive, Gerry Scanlan; the outgoing chairman of Irish Life and Permanent, Roy Douglas; David Cronin, former treasurer of Allfirst in the US and the late Paddy Dowling, former AIB deputy chief executive. Another Faldor beneficiary was Diarmuid Moore, now retired, who was an executive at AIB in the 1980s.
As result of these revelations there have been several calls for the industry to examine the culture at its heart.
Today the Taoiseach said things couldn't get much worse for Ireland's banks.
Speaking to RTE at a summit of EU and South American leaders in Mexico, Ahern said that the priority now was to protect the credibility abroad of the Irish financial sector.
He said that meant that thorough investigations must be carried out and those involved in wrongdoing must be punished.
The financial services regulator has described recent banking scandals at AIB as disturbing. Speaking on RTE Radio's This Week programme, the chief executive of the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority, Liam O'Reilly, said it was important to remember that inappropriate dealing could not happen today because of new laws.
O'Reilly said IFSRA's investigations into AIB should be complete before the end of July and he said the authority planned to publish a complete report. The regulator told RTE it was important to restore consumer confidence in financial institutions and he said IFSRA would be working with financial institutions to ensure that they operated in a culture of integrity.
The opposition parties have also been reacting to the AIB scandals. The Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the stream of scandals emerging from AIB had left him very angry and that the financial regulator must publish a full health-check on the bank to resore public confidence. Dan Boyle of the Green Party called on the Government to establish a commission on banking.
