There was no "business as usual" sign over the door at AIB's headquarters yesterday, but the mood at the bank's briefing on half-year results got the message across fairly effectively.

Chief executive Mr Michael Buckley was smiling and calm. Questions on the bank's most recent brush with negative publicity were dismissed as he expressed his desire to avoid travelling "that road" on this occasion.

Mr Buckley's wish to avoid yet more questions on customer overcharging was perhaps understandable. Not only had he gone over the facts repeatedly recently, but this day was about more positive news.

The bank was posting profit growth of 10 per cent after taking a €45 million hit on the foreign-exchange investigations (in the words of Davy Stockbrokers) "on the chin".

It remains on track to meet the market's expectations for this year and it is Mr Buckley's "objective" that double-digit growth in earnings per share will again be posted in 2005.

Why talk about the bad stuff when you've got all of this to show off? Customers, after all, appear to be happy to continue giving their money to AIB.

The bank's group finance director, Mr Gary Kennedy, shared Mr Buckley's wish to move on. When his boss pointed out that not "one question" at the bank's earlier conference for analysts had related to overcharging, Mr Kennedy said investors' main concern was how the resultant charge would be "ringfenced".

Equally, Mr Buckley said, nobody on the investor side had been raising the issue of Faldor, the offshore vehicle used by some former AIB executives to avoid paying tax. The chief executive consigned Faldor to "an earlier generation".

The messy business of "investigations" aside, AIB's numbers this time round are notable for their clarity compared to the same results a year ago, when one analyst joked that the bank was suffering from "underlyingitis gone mad". But such criticisms are unlikely to be levelled this year. Loans and deposits are up and costs are down.

Concerns remain, of course. Margin attrition, for example, continues as interest rates remain low and lending grows faster than deposits. As rates climb and deposits increase, however, this will become less of a problem.

Those who like to panic may also point to the bank's heavy lending exposure to the property market but even this concern was firmly dismissed yesterday.

"There is a threat out there. That threat is not going to have any impact on our business," Mr Buckley said, in the definite tone with which he conducted all of yesterday's business.