Get this: the chief executive of the second-biggest bank in Ireland has decided to resign, apparently because the IT department found ‘adult’ links on his computer hard drive.

Apparently he himself had taken a ‘strong view’ on this, because he had broken the internal rules of the bank, according to Sunday’s papers. The websites are said not to be illegal, which presumably means they did not contain child pornography.

Is this pathetic or what? I mean, Bank of Ireland wouldn’t normally fire someone, even someone junior just because they’d looked at a few dodgy websites.

Michael Soden has done a lot of other things which I thought were a lot more damaging to the banks credibility. He never resigned over any of these. Two famous examples come to mind – the botched merger with a UK bank; proposing a merger with AIB. Of much less importance, the shabby and badly organized service he provided to customers who had to visit his branches or ring hs call centres.

So why is he resigning over of a few dirty pictures?