IT's jobs for the insiders at AIB, even though the bank is totally reliant on the taxpayer for its survival and the minister for finance has told them he wants an outsider to clean out the top echelons in the bank.

It's jobs for the insider in Fianna Fáil, as Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, party stalwart and committed Cowenite, is appointed EU Commissioner.

Both the banks and the government will explain away these appointments in their own terms, but to anyone who is not a banking or political crony, it is clear that neither the banks nor the government have learned anything about regaining moral authority.

Brian Lenihan got his salary cap for new managing director Colm Doherty, but AIB got the insiders they wanted to run the bank – its secrets and its ethos preserved. They claimed they looked everywhere for outsiders, but nobody believes them. No doubt another day will come, perhaps a few years down the line, when the public is less raw, when their committed executives will get their just rewards. You need people who are familiar with the ropes to make those kind of decisions. Next month, the budget seeks to take €4bn from public spending, with social welfare firmly positioned in the crosshairs of Brian Lenihan's sights. The Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil that the country cannot afford current rates of social welfare.

If that's the case, then neither can we afford the pension deals of former government ministers who are still working in state appointed jobs. John Bruton, Charlie McCreevy and now Geoghegan-Quinn have all benefited in outrageously handsome fashion as a result of government appointments to EU positions. The least they can do is renounce the ministerial pensions – amounting to €100,000 and more – that are paid on top of their already massively overblown salaries. There's a case for pensions at retirement age – but not before, and certainly not while ministerial pensioners are in highly-paid state-appointed positions.