Permanent TSB’s stuttering recovery

The pressure is on to finally clean up Permanent TSB’s non-performing loan book, but the options are becoming increasingly limited

Jeremy Masding, chief executive of Permanent TSB, says the lender has to start paying dividends sooner rather than later Picture: Fergal Phillips

When the troika came to Ireland in the dying days of 2010 they had their own firm views on our broken banking system and how to fix it. For a while,Permanent TSB, or Irish Life & Permanent as it was then called, didn’t form part of their plans.

It was a mess. Arrears on its mortgage loans were far in excess of other banks. But the government, and the bank’s management, in 2012 ...