Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 June 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Allied Irish Banks

9:30 am

Mr. Bernard Byrne:

We briefly discussed this earlier. I will give a summary again. We accept that this group is coming later in the process. There is no debate about that. We have talked about this group here before. This has been our position on the contractual issue associated with this and the waiver form that was signed by the individuals when they drew down the tracker rate. Not having had a tracker entitlement in the beginning, when drawing down the tracker they effectively signed a one page waiver that said if they ever moved off the tracker, they had no entitlement to go back. That was the position which we held and we felt it was supported by the position of not including them in the overall programme. As part of the Central Bank investigation, which was a later process, and an investigation with EY, having a discussion about consistency with us and across the industry, they have engaged with us and all the cohorts extensively. They pushed us on this one to think more about ancillary and other materials associated with this, rather than the contractual position and what the customer signed. When we did that and took into account their perspective on ambiguous language and other materials that were more available, we went back to the view that we would include this group. I mentioned "finely balanced" in my statement. These things are finely balanced with regard to how one determines which way to go in fairness to everyone. We know that everyone wants a tracker. That is not the point. The question is how we get to the point of deciding whether somebody has a sufficient entitlement and it is fair across every perspective. Based on that interaction with the Central Bank, we decided to include this group. That is why it is late.

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