Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The point I have made - and I have made it before at a previous committee - is that the Financial Services Ombudsman has rejected 74% of the claims, where it had made findings, on tracker mortgages. I have not seen the files. I imagine that some of the claims would probably not have been upheld. I would bet my house that the Financial Services Ombudsman Bureau made serious errors on claims. I would do this because I know individuals who were tortured financially because the banks used information that was based on decisions that were made by the Financial Services Ombudsman. The banks were able to wave these decisions of the Financial Services Ombudsman, only to find out as a result of the Central Bank tracker mortgage investigation that they were right all along, the bank was wrong and the Financial Services Ombudsman was wrong. I am not saying this personally to Mr. Deering because I am aware that he was not in the office at the time, and I know that the staff at the time were trying to do their best, but they made wrong decisions over and over again. They added to the difficulty and they gave a safety blanket to the banks in respect of the financial torture the banks put their customers through. There is a responsibility to deal not just with the live cases, but all of the cases that were rejected by the Financial Services Ombudsman Bureau to review them to find out why the cases were rejected, if they were rejected inappropriately and what lessons can be learned in the future.

If there is a case, and I believe there is, the Financial Services Ombudsman needs to apologise to those customers for failing them as organ of the State which was supposed to protect them. There is the duty on the organisation to do that. One bank refused to deal with any of the cases adjudicated by the ombudsman and I commend it for ensuring that happened, but it has a responsibility to the customers it has failed.