Banking Sector
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-26
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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

I have always been of the view that the State should have retained ownership of AIB. It was a mistake to sell off the shares. Fine Gael has a different ideological point of view and wanted the bank back in private ownership and is entitled to hold that opinion. However, the ideological position has come at a real financial cost. I think we can accept that now with the benefit of hindsight. The public AIB share was sold off at one of the worst times. When the Government started selling shares, they cost €2.32. They are now worth over €10. That shareholding would today be worth €16 billion before we even talk about the massive dividends that we no longer get from the bank. What we have instead is less than half of that sum. Worse still is that the Government sold off the public shares at that time and just left large portions of the proceeds sitting there. It did not use the money to build the necessary infrastructure. The money is losing value. That is the issue. The Tánaiste talked about Exchequer returns, but it is circular. It is in the State and getting a very low return. There is no actual return. It is a net zero return.
Does the Tánaiste accept that if we held those shares, they would be worth twice what we have now? That money should at least be getting some return as it sits in the ISIF account.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-26