The EBS Building Society has again attracted the interest of UK carpetbaggers as a potential candidate for demutualisation.

The Carpetbaggers.com website has alerted the public to the EBS as an "Irish bagging opportunity" - its way of describing a potential opportunity for the public to benefit from a windfall from free shares. The EBS has blamed incorrect information from an inexperienced member of staff for reigniting this speculation and reaffirmed its commitment to retaining its mutual status.

The EBS has long championed its mutual status, but periodically comes under scrutiny as a potential windfall target. The EBS and the Irish Nationwide are the only remaining Irish building societies.

EBS head of lending Mr Martin Walsh yesterday reaffirmed the society's commitment to retaining its mutual status. "We are very strongly of the view that our success to date is due to the fact that we are different and this is very valuable for our customers," he said.

As one of the dwindling number of Irish mutually owned building societies, the carpetbaggers are taking the view that it will eventually be either taken over or forced to change its status, triggering a payment to members.

The recent interest from carpetbaggers in the UK appears to have been based on information from an EBS employee that non-residents could open Share accounts entitling them to become members of the society for just £30 (#38).

This suggested that for a small outlay, individuals living in the UK could stand to benefit from free shares if the EBS was demutualised.

Mr Walsh said this information was incorrect and had been provided by an inexperienced member of staff in response to a query. "We don't open non-resident Share accounts and haven't for years," he said. Non-residents can open a deposit account with the society but there is a minimum balance requirement of £10,000 - and this does not confer membership.

In recent years, Carpetbaggers.com has acted as a focal point for members who wanted their building society to vote on whether to convert to a public company and, in the process, distribute free shares.

There are signs that the might of the carpetbaggers is beginning to wane, however, particularly after their failure to get a member of the UK Nationwide building society who favoured demutualisation elected to its board of directors. In light of this defeat, the website this week declared that carpetbagging as it is currently known is "dead" and that it will focus on other issues in future.

The British government has also joined the fight to protect building societies from being forced to change status by carpetbaggers. A Bill is being introduced to toughen up rules allowing building societies to convert into publicly quoted banks.

Under the proposed Bill, the voting threshold required for demutualisation will be extended to 75 per cent on a minimum turnout of 50 per cent of the society's membership, making it difficult for small groups to offer windfall gains in return for a change of ownership structure.