Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has welcomed moves by AIB to pay its first dividend to shareholders in nine years.
Minister Noonan has said that today’s results from AIB confirm a very strong performance by the bank with sustainable profits and significant lending into the Irish economy.
AIB has posted its full year results for 2016, which includes a pre-tax profit of €1.7bn.
"The underlying profitability is very strong," said AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne.
"€1.9bn was our profit in 2015, €1.7bn in 2016, but in both years we had a series of on-off items.
"The actual underlying profitability of the business is about €1bn, and that's coming through quite strongly, we've very, very strong growth in the Irish market, 16% increase in new lending."