Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With respect to Mr. Makhlouf, I will give the example. I do not intend for him to follow all of what has been debated here with the Minister and the issues that appear in the Irish Independenttoday. The FSPO does not have the same reach a bank would have. Thousands of households that have thousands of loans that have been sold to vulture funds do not have the same protection that they used to have when their loan provider was a main street lender. The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman has made a number of determinations to say that the conduct that people complain about is outside the scope of its investigations as a result of the loan being sold to a vulture fund. An example of a very basic issue that is complained about is a standard financial statement for anybody who is with a vulture and is in financial distress. A standard financial statement is defined in law as a key decision and therefore the key decision lies not with the credit servicing firm but with the owner of the loan - the vulture fund, or the unnamed entity, in most people’s eyes - which is unregulated or at least was unregulated for the main part up until 2019. Therefore, anybody who has an issue with how his or her standard financial statement was dealt with and what offering was provided to them cannot make a complaint to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman. That is a basic right that people should have in respect of financial dealings with institutions. They were sold a pup by members of the Central Bank’s own staff. I have a quote here from Bernard Sheridan. He stated:

The legislation has achieved a lot in terms of consumer protection. All the protections remain there.

I ask the question of the Governor, his staff and the Central Bank; I acknowledge he was not there then. How does that apply to Elizabeth McAuley, who has a determination from the FSPO, which I have here, that the protections do not remain there? The FSPO cannot even look at her complaint because the conduct she complains about happened by an unregulated entity, despite the assurance we are given all the time that in 2015, because of the credit servicing Act, that this would be captured. It is not captured and that is only the first part. We are talking about tens of thousands of people who do not have access to the FSPO.

The Central Bank has a key role in consumer protection. People look to the Central Bank for trust and independent analysis. When it tells a committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas and it tells consumers they are as fully protected as they were before, people believe that. However, it is not the case. I think the Governor needs to explain very clearly how they got that wrong. Is the Central Bank planning to fix this? This is not the only issue; I will come to another part of it in a minute. I expect an explanation.