Mr. Ger Deering:

The Deputy will appreciate that I will answer the question in general terms; I cannot comment on a particular bank. I answered his last question in general terms. One of the codes set out by the Central Bank is that one cannot use a change in a tracker mortgage to come to an agreement with a consumer who is having difficulty paying. I would look at the merits of each case. What the Deputy has outlined sounds wrong on the face of it. I am not commenting on the bank. Rather, I am saying that where people lost trackers or had their tracker mortgages changed in some way related to the fact that they were having difficulties paying their mortgages would appear to me to be wrong.

Additional information is now becoming available, in particular through the Central Bank examination, which was not available when previous decisions were made. That is an important point. As Deputies know, one case went to the High Court and it was only then that additional evidence became available. Part of the difficulty at the time of the original investigation was that the information which should have been given was not given.