Forty-eight staff working for banks and investment firms in Ireland were paid over €1m in 2021, according to new data on high earners in the sector released by the European Banking Authority (EBA).
The figure represents an increase of eight on the previous year.
Under an EU Directive, regulators in each member state are required to collect information about the number of individuals per institution paid more than €1m in a given year.
The EBA then collates this information on high earners and publishes it in an anonymised form once a year.
The data covers all staff of institutions and EU branches in third-country institutions, with the figures broken down into bands and job functions.
The highest earner, who is not identified, received total remuneration of €6.63m, made up of €2.2m in fixed remuneration and €4.4m in variable pay.
There were a further six individuals who earned between €3m and €4m.
Eight people were paid packages in the range of €2m to €3m, while 33 were recipients of salaries, bonuses and other payments totalling between €1m and €2m.
14 of the 48 were described as working in a management function, 24 in investment banking and two in retail banking.
A further two were employed in asset management, two in corporate functions and two in independent control functions.
Of the almost €86m that they collectively earned, more than €35m was fixed remuneration and over €50m was variable remuneration.
€15m of the variable remuneration was awarded in 2021 but deferred to a later time.
On average, the total remuneration per individual was €1.79m.
The ration of variable to fixed remuneration was 143%.
Aside from the well-known retail banks used by the general public, Ireland is also home to a large number of international investment banks and wealth management firms, many of whose staff are highly paid and are the focus of the data.
Late last year the Minister for Finance announced the partial relaxation of the cap on the pay of bankers working for the Irish owned main retail banks that were bailed out by the Government.
However, in 2021 the cap remained in place.
Francesca McDonagh, the then chief executive of Bank of Ireland, was paid a total of €960,000.
AIB chief executive Colin Hunt earned a total of €600,000 in salary and pension contributions.
At Permanent TSB its CEO, Eamonn Crowley, received €572,000 in salary, pension and other benefits.
Overall, the analysis shows that there has been a significant rise in the number of people working for banks and investment businesses across the EU who were paid over €1m.
1,957 individuals received remuneration of over €1m, up 41.5% on 2020 - the highest level since the authority began collecting the data in 2010.
"This increase is linked to the overall good performance of institutions, in particular in the area of investment banking and trading and sales, continuing relocations of staff from the UK to the EU and a general increase in salaries," the EBA said.
70% of the increase in terms of the number of all high earners is coming from institutions located in Italy, France and Spain.
The weighted average ratio of variable to fixed remuneration for all high earners increased from 86.4% in 2020 to 100.6% in 2021.
