Three senior members of the bank that almost bankrupted Ireland have appeared in a Dublin court charged with unlawfully helping the Republic's one-time richest man Sean Quinn and his family buy shares in the financial institution.

The trio who headed up the now defunct Anglo Irish Bank, Sean FitzPatrick, Pat Whelan and Willie McAteer, are national hate figures in Ireland.

The former chairman and chief executive FitzPatrick, 64, former finance McAteer, 61, and the bank's former managing director in Ireland Whelan, 50, appeared in the Dublin district court on Monday.

Outside court No 1 a man who claimed to be homeless attempted to hand a letter of protest to FitzPatrick as he was led in. However, Gardaí intervened and arrested the man following several warnings that he stay away from the defendants.

The extent of the case the state is building against them was revealed when it emerged that there are nine volumes in nine boxes of the Garda Book of Evidence which lays downs the charge.

The trio are charged with breaches of Section 30 of the Irish Companies Act in connection with loans to the Quinn family from the Anglo Irish Bank.

All three were remanded on continuing bail to appear again at the next sitting of the Dublin circuit criminal court.

The Anglo Irish Bank was the preferred lending institution to major property speculators and business figures like Quinn. It was his borrowing from the bank to play the international property market that broke his business empire. When the property crash led to the collapse in the Anglo Irish Bank, the state nationalised it, pumping billions of taxpayers euros into the institution. It has been renamed as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.