The previous career of Bank of Ireland's €490,000-a-year governor came back to bite him last week.

Archie Kane - who was brought in to chair Bank of Ireland after it was bailed out by the state - has a bit of a past. Something that probably should have been Googled before he was given the job.

The Scottish banker was one of the top executives running Lloyds Bank's insurance division before leaving in mid-2011.

This was the part of the bank that was central to a massive payment protection insurance mis-selling scandal that cost billions in clean-up costs.

Lloyds Bank set aside almost €12bn to cover the cost of compensating customers who had been wrongly sold the toxic policies.

The widespread rip-off of British consumers was described as "the biggest financial mis-selling scandal of all time" by the influential British-based consumer magazine Which?.

Despite this, Kane was appointed governor - or chairman - of Bank of Ireland in June 2012, following the retirement of Pat Molloy.

Before details of the PPI mis-selling emerged, Kane had been awarded a generous bonus of €907,000 by Lloyds in 2010. This bonus was in the form of shares deferred for three years. However, when the PPI scandal erupted, Kane and four fellow top execs at Lloyds had 25pc of that bonus clawed back in 2012.

The following year, another 25pc was clawed back and another 25pc last year, meaning that close to €680,000 from his €907,000 share-based bonus had been reclaimed by the bank.

Last week it happened again, with Lloyds Banking Group taking the last bit of his bonus back. Ouch.

BoI isn't at all perturbed by the fact that Archie's previous employers were so annoyed with his performance that they reefed all his bonus back.

"Bank of Ireland conducted an extensive international search through an independent agency, with Mr Kane identified as the best qualified candidate. Following this, he underwent the rigorous Central Bank fitness and probity process, and was approved by the Central Bank."

At least Archie will be well insulated with his bumper pay packet.

Sunday Indo Business