But RTE only wanted to know about the staff pension scheme, which has become the latest obstacle in the tortured progress towards another national pay deal.

Faced with an 800m deficit on its scheme, Bank of Ireland wants to water down the pension entitlements of people recruited after October. It is a tactic that has worked well in the past for other big employers, including AIB, and is under active consideration by companies such as Aer Lingus.

But the trade unions are determined to dig in their heels, fearful of being seen to stand idly by while employers hatch a new generation of "yellow pack" recruits whose pensions would be a pale shadow of those enjoyed by their bosses.

The optics have not been helped by the 400,000 pension top-up pocketed last year by the bank's previous chief executive, Mike Soden, as part of a 2.7m golden handshake. Goggin's own retirement also looks pretty secure and he can look forward to a guaranteed pension of at least 600,000 a year when he eventually packs in the day job.

So just when agreement was finally in sight on a national pay deal, Bank of Ireland's pension plans have sent everyone back to the drawing board with unions pledging to fight any moves to create two-tier workforces of pension haves and have nots. Couldn't Goggin have picked a better time to drop the pensions bombshell?

"It would have been potentially worse to wait until after a new deal had been agreed because we would have been portrayed as having this up our sleeves all along and trying to conceal it, " he says.

Goggin accuses the unions of deliberately distorting the bank's plans to suit their own ends, pointing out that it plans to give new recruits a much better deal than other employers who have followed the same path, including AIB.

"If I wanted an easy life, we would have come up with a defined-contribution scheme for new people as many other employers have chosen to do. But we went to a whole pile of trouble and additional cost to find something more responsible and equitable. If I regret anything, it's the way our innovative and progressive approach has been hijacked by others for their own purposes."

The bitter spat is surprising given the relative ease with which the bank has been able to do business with the unions over the past 12 months. They have accepted 2,100 job cuts in Ireland and the UK over four years in return for a package of concessions for those remaining on the payroll, including a 35-hour working week and profit-sharing.

Goggin says the bank is well on the way to achieving the target of slashing 120m from the cost base by 2009, comfortably overshooting the savings goals set for the year just finished. Some 800 people have already left the bank and this will rise shortly to 1,200 with an outsourcing agreement for facilities management.

Having spent all his working life in the bank, it cannot have been easy for Goggin to wield the scalpel, although he says his knowledge of the organisation allowed him to direct the cuts in areas that needed it most.

"I'm not a dispassionate man but I thought it would have been tougher, " he says. "It was my passion for the organisation that gave me the determination to take the decisions that had to be made.

Investors were concerned that we were incapable of addressing the cost base and Bank of Ireland was seen to be at the lower end of the efficiency scale. I took the view that we needed to put that bogey to rest once and for all."

No corner of the bank has emerged unscathed and Goggin revealed last week that a sale-and-leaseback deal is under consideration to unlock value from the bank's 254 branches across the country.

"We're not in a mad rush to do it but the opportunity is there and our thinking is pretty advanced. We expect to be able to announce something in the next six to 12 months."

When even the banks are pulling out, is this the clearest sign yet that the game is finally up for property? Goggin says no, claiming he is very positive on the general outlook.

"When you boil it down, it doesn't make sense for us to have capital tied up in non-productive assets like property when it is not generating profits or cash flow for the bank. In a period of buoyant growth, there are much more productive uses for the capital within the business."

While the bank might be prepared to relinquish legal ownership, there is no question of closing branches, which Goggin sees as an essential bulwark in the battle with encroachers from overseas such as Bank of Scotland, Denmark's Danske Bank and Rabobank from Holland.

"It will be very difficult for them to make inroads without good national coverage, " he says. "The only entities with significant distribution are ourselves, AIB and Ulster Bank." Nevertheless, Bank of Ireland is feeling the sting of greater competition and has been forced to offer free banking to more customers, albeit with strings attached.

Goggin claims to be able to beat the upstarts at their own game and on a much bigger pitch in the UK, where it has a distribution alliance with the post office.

"We can achieve significantly more in the UK than predatory players such as Rabobank or Bank of Scotland can achieve in Ireland. We've about one million current account customers in Ireland and, after only two years in business, the post office joint venture already has half that number. And it's only scratching the surface."

Having used the post office as a back door to Britain, does Goggin have any advice for Belgian-Dutch financial conglomerate Fortis, which is attempting a similar feat in Ireland through a link with An Post?

"They shouldn't underestimate the challenge . . . it's a tough grind, " he says.

"The UK post office is probably more advanced on a change trajectory than the post office is here."

Rather than sniffing around the edges, the serious players from overseas are taking out their chequebooks to snap up local banks such as First Active and National Irish Bank. Will Bank of Ireland, whose share price lags its European peers, eventually end up on their shopping lists?

"Nobody has a right to independence, you have to continue to earn it, " Goggin says. "Many of the big banks taken over recently, such as Abbey National in the UK and HVB in Germany, were performing poorly and were waiting to be rescued. The best way to keep your independence is to be a top-performing financial institution."

And if that doesn't keep predators at bay, maybe the 800m hole in the pension fund will do the trick.

CURRICULUM VITAE

BRIAN GOGGIN
Job: Chief executive, Bank of Ireland
Age: 54
Home: Foxrock, Co Dublin
Education: MSc in management from Trinity College; chartered certified accountant.

Career: Joined Bank of Ireland in 1969.

Appointed chief executive for wholesale financial services in 1996 followed by a move to asset management in April 2003. Joined the bank's court of directors in January 2000 and was appointed group chief executive in 2004 following the resignation of Mike Soden.

Family: Married with three children, Paul, Linda and Susan.

BANK OF IRELAND
Market worth: 13.8bn 12-month share range: 12.32- 15.80 Assets: 162bn Results: 1,292m underlying profit before tax in the year to 31 March 2006 Source of profits: Ireland 64%; UK 22%; Rest of world 14%