ETHNA TINNEY was voted back onto the board of the EBS Building Society yesterday evening after a lively annual meeting in Dublin.
Ms Tinney, a producer with RTÉ's Lyric FM, was narrowly defeated at last year's agm after she lost the support of the board. She had criticised directors' pay and some of the strategies pursued by the building society.
Of the eight candidates standing for election to seven places on the EBS board yesterday, Ms Tinney topped the voting with 13,290 votes - 1,505 votes more than the next highest candidate. Six directors who had the support of the EBS board - Emer Finnan, Pat McCann, Cathal Magee, Liam Mulvihill, Jim Ruane and Philip Williamson - were also elected.
EBS chairman Mark Moran told The Irish Timesthat he looked forward to working with Ms Tinney and hoped that last year's boardroom strife was behind the building society.
He said he would be meeting Ms Tinney later this week. "We want to get on with running the business. It behoves all of us to work hard together," he said.
Solicitor Linda O'Shea Farren, who also stood for election and addressed members assembled at the Croke Park conference centre before Ms Tinney, received the lowest number of votes and failed to be elected. In her address, she had called for an independent assessment of whether the building society should demutualise, so "we all can make an informed decision".
Addressing the agm, Ms Tinney criticised some of the society's rates on products and its decision to sell its headquarters building on Westmoreland Street in Dublin city centre six years ago, and move to a rented building on Burlington Road in Dublin 4.
She also criticised the payment of €1.869 million to former EBS chief executive Ted McGovern, who left the building society last year - compensating him in part of his early retirement.
Mr Moran told members that the amount paid to Mr McGovern was agreed after the building society had "taken independent advice" and "benchmarked it against other similar situations".
A number of members questioned the €15 million bad debt provision made by the society in its 2007 accounts due to loans relating to Dublin solicitor Thomas Byrne, who is being sued by a number of financial institutions. The society increased pre-tax profits by just 1 per cent to €66.6 million after making the provision.
EBS finance director Alan Merriman said there had been "embarrassment and concern" about how the Byrne case had occurred. However, the mortgages-to-solicitors scandal had "affected every financial institution in the country", he said, and the €15 million had to be taken in the context of the society's total loan book of €16 billion.
He said the building society was pursuing Mr Byrne "with every vigour" to recover its loans over what he described as a case of fraud and he noted the building society had insurance of up to €65 million to cover such losses.
Mr Moran reiterated the board's intention that the building society would remain a mutual. He said he expected the mortgage market to be worth €29.8 billion this year, down almost 12 per cent from €33.8 billion in 2007.
The building society has invested €5.7 million in its new broker business, Haven, which has gained a market share of almost 7 per cent. Members were told that EBS had benefited from a similar investment in Haven by British building society, Britannia, which later pulled out of the venture.
Speaking after the agm, EBS chief executive Fergus Murphy said the building society would be reviewing its rates on its tracker and standard variable mortgages in the coming weeks in light of the rising cost of funding and would also be assessing the loan-to-value ratios on new mortgages.
