Bank of Ireland is currently selling new shares to its existing shareholders through what is known as a rights issue. This is the second Bank of Ireland rights issue in just a year. The difference is that while shareholders who bought new shares last year paid 55 cent per share, this year's offering is priced at just 10 cent a share.

Or look at it another way, any shareholders unlucky enough to have bought new shares last year have already lost more than 80pc of their "investment". Bank of Ireland shares are definitely not money in the bank.

Now Bank of Ireland is back tapping its shareholders once again. Existing shareholders are being offered the "opportunity" to buy 18 new shares for every five shares they already own. With 1,200 shares Dessie could, if he wished, buy another 4,320 shares in Bank of Ireland at a cost of €432.

But should he bother? Bank of Ireland hasn't paid its shareholders a dividend for three years and any resumption still looks a long way off. Meanwhile, the series of new share issues which have resulted from the various Bank of Ireland recapitalisations means the number of shares outstanding has ballooned.

In 2008, before the financial crisis struck, there were just under a billion Bank of Ireland shares. Following the recapitalisations and other capital-raisings of the past two and a half years the number of Bank of Ireland shares has now risen to 5.3 billion, and will increase another six-fold to 30.1 billion.

This means the original pre-2009 Bank of Ireland shareholders will have seen their stake diluted by almost 97pc by the time the current rights issue is completed.

So what should Dessie do? Should he invest even more money in Bank of Ireland or should be stop throwing good money after bad? With Bank of Ireland now almost certainly destined to follow AIB, IL&P, EBS, Anglo and Irish Nationwide into majority State ownership buying even more shares doesn't strike me as being a very good idea.

Under these circumstances my advice to Dessie is to sell his "rights" to buy the new shares. At the current Bank of Ireland share price of 11.27 cent Dessie's "rights" are worth 1.27 cent per share, or a grand total of just under €55 for his entire entitlement of 4,320 shares. It's not a lot but it's better than a smack in the gob. Dessie should take the money and run.

Earlier this month Bank of Ireland announced that, when its new Visa debit cards are introduced later this year, customers will be able to use them for "contactless" transactions where the value of the purchase is up to €15.

Basically, the customer will scan their cards over a reader which will recognise the card and approve the transaction in less than a second.

This will be much quicker than requiring customers to enter their PIN number.

Bank of Ireland claims that the new cards will reduce queues.

Well that's the theory anyway. But what will the new cards mean for Laser cards? Last October Bank of Ireland announced that it was abandoning Laser in favour of the Visa debit card.

These new cards, with contactless technology, are to be be issued later this year and, when that happens, then the Bank of Ireland Laser card will become history.