Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Tobin for his opening remarks. I note his comment that he sees this as a listening exercise. No doubt the Chairman and I will have a few comments to make. Mr. Tobin acknowledges that this report was as a result of the work of this committee on the tracker mortgages. We would not be having a discussion on banking culture, were it not so blatantly shown to be toxic in terms of how every single major bank managed to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, entirely independently of each other.

It is difficult to believe that they all did the same thing separately in the same way.

It is slightly self-congratulatory to highlight the complete transformation of the regulatory environment. I acknowledge the Central Bank Reform Act 2010, the Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Act 2013 and the Single Supervisory Mechanism, SSM, have made a change, but if the officials had been listening to the contributions of the representatives from the BPFI, there are many who are not convinced, let alone fully convinced that the banks have changed in how they view customers. I know plenty of people who are using post offices more than they use the banks, in spite of the fact that the money might end up in the banks anyway. People feel that the banks do not want walk-in customers. That may be true. There are plenty of bank customers who never want to go near a bank, and I accept that but now bank queues are particularly long, they have different days for coin services and there are branches that do not have human interaction for cash where customers must use a machine. Many people feel that the banks have not learned many of the lessons that the public would like them to have learned, in terms of how they should regard the customer as their main focus. For the banks, it is about return. There will always be a challenge between looking for return for shareholders and so on.

Mr. Tobin said that the outcome he wants is better consumer protection and financial stability and that will be achieved through individual accountability through SEAR, and enhancement to the current fitness and probity and enforcement regimes. I have a number of other questions. I am looking for a timeline. What is the timeline for this regime? How long will the consultation period be? When will this regime be put in place?