Aideen Hayden (Labour)
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I thank the delegation. I want to express my disappointment at how late we received the bank's information. I received the replies to our questions yesterday evening. For the purposes of comparison, we received information from Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB and AIB. It is very disappointing to be given documentation so late in the day because we want to engage meaningfully with this process and it is very important for us to be able to review the questions we spend a lot of time putting together.

I will not go over the ground covered by my colleagues. On the variable rate the banks are charging customers, there is a perception, with which the bank needs to deal, that it is making variable rate customers pay for tracker mortgages handed out by the bank when times were good. From their point of view, the bank holds money belonging to ordinary people in current accounts on which, to the best of my knowledge, they are paid no interest. The bad debts are reducing and the cost of funds has fallen. From their point of view, there is no real excuse for continuing to, in effect, screw them. That is how people see it, and it is something the bank needs to address.

Deputy Doherty referred to the level of arrears in the principal dwellings mortgage book. It is utterly shocking that the bank is engaged in some 5,500 of what could be loosely termed "legal proceedings" out of a loan book of 12,723 mortgages in arrears of more than 90 days. In response to an earlier question it was said that people will not engage in the process until they are on the steps of a court. That is, in effect, telling people the bank is scaring them into participating in a process to resolve mortgage arrears, a scenario for which many people see the bank being as culpable as they are.

I spent years working as a solicitor. For every mortgage product I handled, the bank did an independent valuation, paid for by the customer. The customer paid for the cost of executing the mortgage deed and registering the bank's interest. The proportion of cases in which the bank is engaging in legal proceedings is inordinately high and is much higher than that of the other financial institutions which have come before the committee. The bank needs to examine its internal processes.

This committee prepared a report on mortgage arrears and resolution processes and the clerk will give Mr. Brown a copy of that. It made several good recommendations which Ulster Bank should take on board, not least the AIB initiative to have an independent group of advisers to facilitate the re-engagement of customers with the process. All lenders should consider that proposal and fund it as AIB does. Ulster Bank has a problem if it is using legal proceedings against 5,000 out of 12,000 customers.