Executives at some of the six banks bailed out by the taxpayer last week enjoy access to millions of euro in loans on top of their multi-million-euro salary packages, the Sunday Tribune can reveal.

Eighteen "key management personnel" at Anglo Irish Bank, believed to be the troubled bank at the centre of last Monday night's hastily put together rescue package, had loans outstanding of €47m at the end of last year. This amounts to almost €3m per person.

Other banks have done the same for their "key personnel". AIB, for example, had loans outstanding of more than €18m to 13 key staff at the end of last year. The loans are given at normal commercial rates.

The enormous salaries paid out to such personnel suggest that repaying the loans would not be a burden for any of the recipients. Anglo Irish's chief executive David Drumm received a bonus of €2m last year, for example. This was a 50% increase on the €1.3m bonus he earned in 2006.

Drumm is the only executive from the chosen six banks whose salary and bonus package breaks the €3m mark. Other executives at Anglo-Irish are also handsomely paid. William McAteer, the bank's finance director and chief risk officer, was paid €1,427,000 last year, while the executive in charge of lending, Pat Whelan, received €1,212,000.

On top of large and growing salaries, all bank executives receive generous share option schemes as well as huge payments into a specially funded pension.

For example, in 2007, €262,000 was paid into the pension fund of AIB chief executive, Eugene Sheehy. Bank of Ireland's Brian Goggin's pension fund was boosted by €372,000 – more than one-and-a-half times the €240,000 salary of finance minister Brian Lenihan, who had to rescue the same banks from the brink.

Even if an executive resigns amid controversy, the fall is usually cushioned by a compensation payout. Ted McGovern resigned as CEO of he EBS last September after the board became entangled in row over the re-election of Eithne Tinney to the board.

While McGovern is the lowest paid of the six chief executives, with a relatively modest salary of €677,000 last year (€760,000 in 2006), he received a compensation payment of €1,889,000.

Bank salaries have been rising sharply in recent years, fuelled by spiralling incentive payments which entice executives into agreeing questionable lending risks – a major cause of the financial meltdown.

Michael Fingleton of Irish Nationwide, which has been to the forefront of the crisis, has seen his salary rise by more than 150% in four years. In 2003, Fingleton's package was worth €910,000, more than 25 times the average salary of €35,719 paid to staff in the banking, insurance and building society sector. Last year, Fingleton's package of €2,313,000 was worth more than 50 times his employee's average salary of €44,846.

While finance minister Brian Lenihan said he would be "going in deep" to the banking sector as part of the rescue package, he dismissed calls by the Labour Party to cap the salaries of the bank executives.

"It would be no great hardship anyway for these bank executives to have their salaries capped at their current level given the very high level that exists," remarked Dave Begg of Ictu.

Last month, Begg finally agreed a moderate national pay deal with Turlough O'Sullivan of the employers' group Ibec, which, for the first time ever, included what has become known as the 'fat cats clause'.