This time last year, Ian and I were in the studio finishing up an investigative two-part podcast we made for The Currency about investors burnt by the AIB Belfry funds scandal. Around 2,5000 individual investors sold highly leveraged UK property funds by the bank during the noughties property boom lost their savings and pensions when five of the six funds came crashing down in the economic bloodbath that followed 2008. Most investors ended up getting some form of redress from the pillar bank. But it took an epic fight. For others, it remained a live battle.

In September 2025, work on the podcast was winding down: Right of replies were in from AIB (which declined to take part in the series), lawyers had checked for any legal landmines, and Gerard Gogan at Beacon Studios had patiently threaded together the narrative strands and original score we had commissioned into a tightly knit production.

The only part missing was the opening, which Ian and I were struggling to nail down. How do you set the tone for a decade-plus-long David and Goliath struggle for redress between thousands of small-time investors and a pillar bank?

We ultimately settled on an audio montage that would act as shorthand for the themes and stories to follow: an automated AIB answering message that cut to a phone ringing and the voice of Conor Sheahan from CKS Finance on the line. Sheahan was and remains a stalwart advisor to the beleaguered investors. 

FC: “Hey Conor, it’s Francesca. I’m just giving you a shout to see what’s the latest with the belfry appeals?”

CS: “HI Francesca, Look unfortunately it still remains an extremely painful and frustrating position for people…”

The snippet ended. And the story began. 

*****

A year later, the struggle continues for some. In fact, little has changed in the interim. Over an email catch-up with Sheahan, he said AIB still refuses to pay around 500 affected Belfry investors. Cases are before the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (FSPO) and are due to go to mediation.

The FSPO is pretty much the end of the line for affected investors.

Since 2021, AIB has set aside around a quarter of a billion euro as part of a redress scheme for Belfry, acknowledging the investment was unsuitable for some. In its refusal to repay other individuals, or only partially repay them, AIB has relied on the findings of a 2021 case review which found the leveraged property funds were not inappropriate for other investors given their investment experience and financial position. 

Sheahan has maintained there are blatant inconsistencies in AIB’s approach to redress, and it has been more a case of the bank refusing to take the last bit of medicine when €60 to €75 million would have made the problem go away. 

The truth is that none of the investors might have got a cent if some had not bravely banded together over a decade ago and formed an action group that sued the bank.  Aided by advisors like Sheahan and solicitor Tom Casey, they brought the fight to AIB all the way to the Supreme Court.

Listening back to the podcast, I am struck by that camaraderie and show of strength, but also the lingering hurt of those affected, sometimes tinged with self-flagellation as they saw their savings wiped out. Families were affected; pensions and college funds gone.

The world has moved on from the frenzied years of the Celtic Tiger and the austerity that followed. As time passes, the excesses and the failures of earlier eras fade. The now trumps then. Politicians, the public, and the media have a greater excuse to disengage with a story from the past. Arguably the Belfry investors were always political orphans: sold to during an unsustainable boom presided over by Fianna Fáil and suffering under Fine Gael-Labour-Troika austerity, and unlikely as an investor class to sit under the mast of Sinn Féin.

But the imprint of those years still marks the lives of the Belfry investors, particularly those who have not been recompensed. It is not to say they are stuck or can’t move on with their lives. It is more as Bessel van der Kolk said in his book The Body Keeps the Score: “The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort.”

These were stories that had begun with friendly visits from bank officials to their homes and workplaces – one started with a conversation across balconies in Spain. Another involved investment intermediaries being gifted cabbage from the family vegetable garden.

Journalism cannot of itself deliver redress or ease the discomfort, but it can ensure that those looking for rights to be wronged have a voice. 

This evening I will be in London to attend the Future of Media Awards. Belfry: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Loss has been nominated in the Podcast of the Year specialist/regional category. Win or lose, it is a proud achievement for The Currency. It is also, I hope, a tribute to the investors who stuck by each other, and their advisors like Conor Sheahan and Tom Casey, who kept with them through a difficult journey.

Further listening:

Belfry: A podcast series that investigates one of AIB’s darkest chapters