Mr. Padraic Kissane:

I do not want to appear flippant but there is a huge issue with the left hand not telling the right hand within the bank because they are departmental and it is a nice blame game they can play. It is a case of the bank saying a department was not involved in the tracker investigation and did not know and it had to continue with the legal route because of the issues involved. I have cases in my office, one of which involved a lady who got a phone call from the arrears unit while she was in the cardiac unit of a hospital. I have come across cases of attempted suicides. They are not explained but they are not with us any longer. I have come across health issues. I said a long time ago that what is within it still has to come out. If financial stress is brought to bear on a family or a person, isolation, health and relationship issues arise. The tentacles of this octopus spread everywhere. If somebody takes €400, which was the average overcharge, out of a person's wallet, purse or bag every month for seven years, at what point does it get in on that person? That is what happened. Taking money by stealth is the way I would describe it. One of the first things people have difficulty understanding is when they have to revisit it. I would get people to print off details of every single bank account they had at the period, because it jogs the memory. I recently asked a man from Kerry who came to me whether he had ever had a rejected direct debit. He told me he had lots of them and I said that they were €10 a go. I told him that €10 is a lot of money and he made a very important point to me when he said, "Padraic, where I was, €1 was a lot of money". He told me that €10 was a fortune and was the difference between him eating and not eating. I would love a project to be undertaken to see how much was made from rejected direct debits through this period because I would say it is a small fortune. They were always charged even though the debit would have been balanced.