He also said that it too early to assess how much Poland's banks will benefit from the country's co-hosting of the 2012 European Championships. Soccer's European governing body Uefa announced last week that Poland and the Ukraine would jointly host the competition.

Pre-tax profits rose at the Irish bank's Polish subsidiary BZWBK rose by 55% last year to PLN 1bn ( 279 million), 147.3m of which was paid out in dividends to AIB and the smaller shareholders who own 30% of the bank.

Despite these figures, however, Crowley said that the bank's strategy remained growing organically in Poland, where it has over 400 branches and more than 1.5m customers.

"If you look at the accession states, Poland's economy is bigger than the other nine put together. There's a fair amount of opportunity for us in Poland, never mind the other central and eastern European states, " he said.

Crowley also said the high level of growth currently being experienced by BZWBK was "not sustainable" and that it would eventually return to more normal levels.

He said that the rapid growth of its personal business was due to historical factors which had impeded the development of that sector in Poland in the past. "The personal and mortgage market here is only four- to fiveyears-old so it's growing dynamically."

"The sector might be growing by up to 40% per annum but if you compare it to AIB's Irish figures, it's still very small."

Crowley said, however, that BZWBK expected its personal business to continue to expand rapidly, particularly its mortgage operations, which grew by 24% last year.

"When you have a young population, historically low interest rates and a rising number of jobs, that fuels expansion in the mortgage market."

In recent years, BZWBK has taken a number of steps to ensure that despite the rapid growth of its loan book, bad debts will remain low.

The bank has centralised its credit approval operations into one central location which, according to Crowley, helps to maintain staff skill levels and ensures a faster turnaround for customers.

"We're now the market leader with bad debts of just 4.9% at the end of last year.

And the reason why it is 4.9% is because it takes a number of years to work bad debts off your books here, " he said.

In terms of business banking, which traditionally has been the mainstay of Polish banks, BZWBK has largely cornered the market in catering for English-speaking firms, including those operated by Irish developers and Irish business people.

"None of the UK banks have operations of our size, " said Crowley. "That said, a lot of people in Poland speak English but we do have Irish staff in key positions in the bank that customers can deal with if they wish."

On the subject of the effect that the 2012 European Championship would have on Poland's economy, Crowley said he didn't want to overplay the event's significance. Previous experience suggests that hosting a major football tournament tends to boost a country's economy. For instance, when France won the World Cup at home in 1998, consumer confidence spiked.

But Crowley said that it would be difficult to assess its significance given the current strength of Poland's economy.

"It's more a case of it being another positive piece of new that shows that Poland is moving up in the world."