John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think it is extraordinary that neither Mr. Mallon nor Mr. Blair knows what the bank is up to in West Register. I find it extraordinary. I cannot pursue it any more because neither one of you knows anything about it. We will pursue it again and the committee would like a comprehensive note on its function, its connection with the bank, the types of property it held or how property was transferred to it and what was expected of West Register, having had the property transferred to it. I think it is extraordinary that the witnesses do not know.

I dispute the fact with Mr. Blair about his efforts to restructure viable businesses. The correspondence I, as Chairman of the committee, and other members have received regarding GRG tells a different story. It is a story of viable businesses mixed in with businesses that were in difficulty, not being separated out.

It is a story of the total package simply being dumped from Global Restructuring Group, GRG, to a vulture fund of some kind or another. That may have been a piece of work the witnesses undertook to save their bank or to better their balance sheet, but it distinctly contrasts with the action they have taken on the trackers.

The witnesses are talking about a bad time in their bank. I will give them an example of a bad time. I want to tell them about a customer, and this is on the tracker issue, which does not compare with how the bank dealt with the GRG customers. This person tells us that they overpaid their mortgage by approximately €400 a month. It is ongoing for the past seven years. They struggle with their monthly repayments and during that time they had to assist their two children who had Asperger's syndrome. They have gone to credit unions and banks for loans to support the care of those two children. The person says they have gone without food, without heat in their home, without holidays, and the children of that family are suffering to this day. They estimate they are owed approximately €30,000 and, I am sure, more from the witnesses' bank, and they still have not dealt with them. It is totally unacceptable, in any society, that the most vulnerable would be treated the way this family has been treated.

Do the witnesses know that in recent weeks, in the lead-up to this committee, the correspondence to the committee has peaked at an incredible high? I examined that correspondence and took from it the basics, and what it is telling us is that the bank's help line is a farce, that it does not give the answers or any comfort as to the timeframe for dealing with the issue, whether the individual is in scope or not, the level of compensation and so on. It is as if the bank just established it because the Central Bank said so, but the level of information is such that it is unhelpful because it adds to the frustration and anger of the person who contacts the help line in the first place.

Regarding help lines, I draw the witnesses' attention to other pieces of correspondence, which bear a trend across a huge number of customers. These people have failed to deal successfully with the bank, even on the most basic pieces of information, so they have taken to employing either financial consultants, people who would assist in that regard or legal representation. In spite of that, the bank has not responded. Again and again, it sends out the same letters that are full of nonsense about what it is doing. It does not answer any of the questions it has been asked and, in some of these cases, the person writing the letter tells us that the questions they have asked have not been acknowledged or answered and that the bank is not dealing with the questions in their lives that are critical to how they plan the rest of the servicing of their mortgage, and their lives. Does that not stand in stark contrast to how the witnesses said their bank dealt with the GRG issue and then turned around and failed the ordinary citizens of this State who find themselves being pushed all over the place? They write to us just to get the basic information.

I want to know what the witnesses intend to do to correct that and what they will do for individual families who find themselves in a particular set of circumstances where their quality of life is destroyed and where the children of that family are having to suffer as well. Will they give those families priority if they write directly to them? Will they instruct their staff to reply? Will they give the front-line staff the appropriate answers to the questions we are being asked, as a finance committee, to address? If they are so fond of their customers, why are they treating them very badly?