Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will give Mr. Masding some evidence. When the Financial Services Ombudsman said the bank was wrong, that was the evidence but obviously something happened at board level whereby the bank decided to appeal the case to the High Court. Whether there was a conscious or deliberate effort when the customers were not put back on the tracker rates, when the Financial Services Ombudsman found that the bank was in error the bank should have rectified the situation.

Afterwards when the High Court found that Permanent TSB was in error, the bank should have rectified the situation. In layman's terms, if this happened anywhere outside a financial institution people would be locked up in Mountjoy because individuals' money was stolen . It was stolen by a financial institution. The redress scheme, which was forced upon Permanent TSB, meant the bank had to rectify the situation. The Central Bank has made that clear. Permanent TSB did the right thing, but it had no option but to stand up and say it would make things right. What the bank is doing is returning the original money it took from them back to the customers with a little bit of top-up for the pain and suffering caused, which amounts to about 10%. That is the problem here. There was a conscious effort and a decision was taken. Maybe Mr. Masding can enlighten this committee as to whether he was part of the decision-making process that either appealed to the High Court - I am not sure if he was there at the time - or to the Supreme Court.