Mr. Padraic Kissane:

That is what I said. No compensation was given. It was an astonishing position, and I could not understand how it was sustained. Essentially I did not consider what customers were awarded in redress at all. I listened to people. What I told all the banks is that everyone assumes that everyone who came to me brought an appeal. That is not the case at all. In a lot of cases where people came to me, there was no reason for an appeal. I would assess their situation as an adviser.

However, I heard people's accounts of the carnage that had happened. I will give an example. Yesterday I spoke to a lady who was so upset that I had to make time to speak to her even though I was busy at the time. She sold her house in 2016 because the family was fearful of going into debt. However, KBC does not classify that as a lost home. Just a month ago, KBC approved her for another loan of €200,000. The mortgage was originally for a sum of €220,000, but it was not on a tracker. It is astonishing. I give this case as an example. This woman was completely broken. I had to say that although it would be difficult to re-crash this car, she had to do it.

I had a lady in my office recently who was dealing with another bank, but this example is illustrative of all the lenders. I asked her what she would want from the appeals process if I had a magic wand and I could do anything. She picked up her redress letter and said she would like me to travel back in time with it by four months, because she did not want it. She could not relive that period. That is the feeling I am trying to express.

What really annoyed me about the customer appeals process in Permanent TSB was that it just dismissed all these concerns and threw them in the bin. I met a girl who had receipts for the babysitters that she needed to hire on the days she had to go standard financial statements meetings in the bank. Those expenses were all thrown in the bin. She had proved every cent of extra money she had spent.

People go on a journey before they go into arrears. This is an important issue with regard to the warehousing cases and so forth. They empty every single bucket that they have. They then run up every credit facility they have to the maximum. They then go to their friends, parents and other family members. Only then do they go into arrears. They travel that journey before they get to the arrears position. I am not talking about the strategic defaulters, a group about whom I do not even care. Families, in particular, will tighten every single belt they can before they get to arrears.