Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am confident we will know the full answer to that question in March when the Central Bank reports back to me with its final adjudication on the numbers of people affected. Regarding my confidence on the figure now, it is possible the figure will increase. However, I do not believe it will increase to the extent that it increased between March and December last year. While it may change, I anticipate that that change will be incremental as opposed to this very substantial change we saw last year. Even if that increment is 100 people, it is still 100 people too many.

On the first question put to me by Senator Horkan on how the Central Bank is engaging with the issue, there are six other affected lenders dealing with what the Central Bank believes to be the vast majority of other cases outside the five banks we have discussed so far, namely, ACC, Bank of Scotland, Danske, IBRC, Springboard Mortgages and Stepstone Mortgages. The total number of impacted cases emerging from that work is approximately 300. This is just under 1% of the total number of cases we have dealt with. I am satisfied that the Central Bank has put in place the right kind of verification process to deal with this. Currently, five of those banks have commenced their own payments of redress and compensation, four of the banks were expected to complete this work before the end of last year and the fifth bank is expected to conclude the work by the end of this month.