Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will finally ask a question on the tracker mortgage issue. Some of these cases will be dealt with on a legal basis and it is to be hoped that others will get satisfactory resolutions at the level of the ombudsman. In 40,000 cases, the banks have had to put their hands up, state they had wrongly taken money from their customers and to pay that money back and compensate them. Many of the cases before the ombudsman relate to the level of compensation or the rates onto which the customers were put back. On the culture of the banks, I probably speak with personal experience as one of the first people to challenge one of the banks on the tracker mortgages issue. The reason for this was that an extended family member of mine was one of the first victims who came to the ombudsman on this issue. They are still with the ombudsman after all of this time, even after the bank has acknowledged the wrongdoing but it has not dealt with it properly. There are many people like that. I understand, as Mr. Justice Hedigan has mentioned, that as a judge, one will hear the cases. When one sees this material at first hand, however, when one sees what opportunities people missed out on, when one hears what happened and one lives through or shares part of that, one can then see the damage the banks have done. After all of their apologies, we still have a large group of people who have taken cases the ombudsman. We have 1,200 people who have taken cases to the ombudsman. Before this tracker mortgage investigation started, there were only 18. If some of these cases are resolved by the ombudsman, thousands more will go in because not everybody who is unhappy is taking a legal case. What can the board do to satisfy itself that the culture that currently exists within the banks is the appropriate one? Mr. Padraic Kissane, who has appeared before this committee many times, has talked about banks that have put customers back on the prevailing rate. Indeed, I imagine he is representing some of the those who are taking cases to the ombudsman. These are people with serious financial experience, who understand all of the detail and sit on the Irish Banking Culture Board.

Is there something the board can do to satisfy itself that the cases it is fighting through the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman are appropriate to the culture Mr. Justice Hedigan believes the bank should be adopting?