Mr. Padraic Kissane:

People on a tracker mortgage are not on a 7.5% rate. I believe tracker mortgages are 1.25%, 1.5% and below. The Deputy will know my views on the 3.25% made-up tracker. The PTSB 3.25% mortgage is not a tracker but something else. I challenged that and have lost faith in the ombudsman's office in that regard because discounted trackers were not even discounted trackers. I am told I am wrong again. I strongly and vehemently disagree. Those rates are incorrect and now coming home to roost because that 3.25% margin is now 7.5%, or about to go to that rate. These mortgages were not even stress tested. They were stress tested at the ECB rate of plus 2% when they originated.

I will come back to the matter of the tracker cases deemed to be impacted. I assume these were variable rate mortgages that should have been on tracker rates. The Central Bank was categorically clear on what has happened regarding restoration to the original loan. The loan must be put in the position it would have been in had the error not occurred. That was the foundation of the investigation. That includes the undoing of anything that subsequently happened while the wrong was being taken out, whether the property was a sole or lost property. I have dealt with many of those cases. The accounts for those cases that were wrongly sold in the middle of an investigation should be restored to the originating loan and whatever arrangement and sales process happened should be undone. That is just paperwork. The loan goes back in, goes back to where it should have been, and there is a refund of the sale to the value of the purchase price, etc. It should not be hard to sort out.