Bank reiterates wish not to attend meeting

AIB chief executive Mr Michael Buckley has again told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service that the bank does not wish to attend a scheduled meeting tomorrow.

In a letter to the committee chairman, Mr Seán Fleming TD, Mr Michael Buckley stated that, while the bank was happy to attend such a meeting, it did not believe it was appropriate to do so during an ongoing investigation.

Mr Buckley has suggested to the committee that its visit should be postponed until after mid-July when the independent investigation into overcharging is completed.

He sent a similar letter last week, which triggered a request from the committee to appear before it regardless.

In his letter, Mr Fleming conveyed the views of other committee members.

"We believe that the issues that we want to raise won't represent a conflict for the bank. We will be focusing on public policy issues," Mr Fleming wrote

He asked Mr Buckley to respond to the committee before Wednesday.

Officials from AIB appeared before the committee last autumn and made a presentation on bank charges.

In the letter, the committee reminded Mr Buckley of some of its representatives' contributions and aspects of those presentations were quoted in the same letter.

The former Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr Lauri McDonnell, has been appointed to conduct an independent investigation into AIB's overcharging of certain customers on foreign exchange transactions to the tune of €20 million.

The bank's automatic assignment of protection payment policies on some mortgages without notifying these customers is also being examined by Mr McDonnell and his team and by inspectors from the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority.