The Government was today urged to nationalise AIB following the announcement by the bank that it recorded a full-year net loss of €2.65billion, its first ever full-year loss.
Fine Gael said the results clearly showed the Government's banking policy was not working.
“We are now 18 months into the banking crisis, but credit is still not flowing, no dividends are being paid on taxpayers’ investment in the banks, and no-one is being held to account for disastrous errors," said the party's finance spokesman and deputy leader Richard Bruton.
“Even though huge sums are being paid over by Irish taxpayers through Nama, this is simply nursing along the toxic loans of the past, in the forlorn hope that these loans will end up paying their way,” he added.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Arthur Morgan called on the bank to be nationalised, saying: "it is not true that nationalised banks will struggle to fund themselves".
Responding to the announcement from AIB that it intended to raise its mortgage interest rates, Mr Morgan said saying the taxpayer was "sick of being forced to help banking businesses that are clearly incapable of running themselves".
Mr Morgan added: "This much is clear - neither AIB nor Bank of Ireland can run themselves as businesses. They are both loss-making, in need of financial help and insurance from the taxpayer, yet they continue to pay their CEOs half a million euro each year.
Meanwhile, Bloxham Stockbrokers said the results would do little to quell uncertainty over the future of the banking sector.
"These results were always likely to fall short in detail of what the market needed to make a fuller assessment of AIB's investment case, particularly with so much uncertainty ahead of the Nama transfer and the capital requirements that will result," Bloxham Stockbrokers said in a note.
"In the 'pre-Nama vacuum', certainty is not plentiful," Bloxham said, referring to the Nama loan transfers, which the Government expects to start later this month.