Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The issue that affects me is Mr. Masding's suggestion that there is a new management team, that it is now customer-centric and so on. I do not have a short memory.

I recall a case which occurred only a couple of years ago, when Mr. Masding was in charge. I recall it because I know the person concerned very well as she is a relative of mine. The bank sent her a letter, because she was €320 in arrears for the first time, and told her the only option for her was voluntary surrender. When I sat at her kitchen table and looked at her contract, it told her clearly that she should have been on a tracker rate. She contacted the bank of which Mr. Masding was in charge again and again to tell it that it was in black and white in the conditions, but she was told she was not entitled to it. I have read her impact statement and about the impact it had on her, her family, her children and the missed opportunities. We have had the victims in here. Mr. Masding was in charge of all that, so it is not a case that this management team just owned up to everything, that now everything is fine and that we should forget it because the bank has restored the money. The bank has stolen opportunities from these families. It is not just a financial amount that was taken from their accounts. The banks stole opportunities from the children, the families, the parents and from the wider family circles because of all the other things they missed out on when they could not afford them. In some cases, the bank took the roof over their heads. It was not done by some other management team, but under Mr. Masding's watch.

I refer to this kind of rosy picture that the banks were not dragged kicking and screaming to a situation in which they had to acknowledge that each of them wrongly took money from the accounts of 40,000 of their customers. That money would still be in the banks' accounts but for the fact that the woman to whom I spoke went to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, FSPO, and she, along with 83 others, took a case against the banks to the court, which opened the gates to where we are today. Mr. Masding was in charge. It was not some other management team. The bank fought this through the court when the FSPO came down on the side of its customers. Forgive me if I do not buy this customer-centric stuff because we have track record to go on. We know these people. Some of them are very close to us and we know the hurt and the pain that this bank and other banks inflicted on them, their lives and their families. Mr. Masding will forgive me if I am suspicious of his bank and its approach to its customers.

In relation to some of the variable rate issues, there are five customers who are on a 9.1% rate. Deputy Michael McGrath spoke about the scandal of the 4.5% interest rate, but this is a 9.1% rate. Would they be penalised if they broke from their ten-year fixed rate contract?