Anglo Irish Bank has begun an investigation after lewd additions made to the Wikipedia page of cabaret singer Dickie Rock were found to have originated from one of its computers.
The Sunday Tribune has learned that last October, just days after the government introduced the bank guarantee scheme which safeguarded all deposits with the country's financial institutions, staff members at the bank added two humorous references to Rock's entry on the internet encyclopaedia.
The Wikipedia entry is generally accurate, detailing the Irish singer's 45-year career.
However, in an addition to Rock's page – made at 12.58pm on 3 October 2008 from IP address 62.254.161.77 – it was falsely claimed: "Dickie is known for being particularly well hung, as are his three sons who have rare ol' heads on them and can often be seen wandering around Donnybrook Fair."
On 10 October at 12.52pm, another addition was made to Rock's page from the same IP address. According to a database search, 62.254.161.77 is the IP address of Anglo Irish Bank, Dublin.
Among those unimpressed was Dickie Rock, who told the Sunday Tribune: "Have these people got nothing better to do? I would have thought with all the trouble going on in the banks, if this was someone in Anglo Irish Bank, they should have been trying to sort that out rather than spending their time making silly additions to my life story. Apart from that, what was written doesn't bother me in the slightest as it's rubbish."
Approached for comment by the Sunday Tribune this weekend, a spokesperson for Anglo Irish Bank said: "We can't comment on the specifics of this case except to say that the bank has a policy that regulates the use of the internet by employees or contractors working on behalf of the bank. All staff are obliged to familiarise themselves with this policy and abide by its terms. Abuse of internet access may lead to discipline up to and including termination of employment."
The comments were later deleted from Rock's Wikipedia entry, but their content, and the IP address from which they were posted, remain on Wikipedia's online records.