Mr. Padraic Kissane:

No. Yesterday, the figure increased to 20,000, according to an article in the Irish Independent. The figures are unknown because while the argument is clear, the lines of discussion are very varied, and it is now a case of who will and who will not get their trackers back. To take the example of AIB, no customers prior to March 2006 are currently getting their tracker mortgages back with that bank because it did not update their terms and conditions until March or April 2006. What I find astonishing about that, and we are getting into the meat of a particular case, is that the bank did not decide on 1 March to change its view of a tracker mortgage and to reprint every relevant piece of documentation. It just decided to update the documentation. The definition of AIB's understanding of a tracker mortgage is set out in the new conditions, and in respect of those cases, they are all going back to tracker mortgages, but the bank claims that the cases that were written prior to the documentation being updated are not entitled to do that. I thought it was the easier argument originally because there are two methods of interest in that documentation, which is variable and fixed, the variable being a tracker. However, that option appeared to have disappeared if a customer decided to fix their mortgage for a period, but where did that option disappear to? The more important question is why the bank did not tell any of its customers that this option was going to disappear, because I have not met one who was told about that, and I have spoken to more than 1,000 people at this stage. I begin to think at what point the banks' stance on this appears foolish.

However, in terms of the numbers, I do not know how many are affected. It is approaching levels now where it is such a serious number and we need to take account of any customers who fixed their mortgage rates during the period. We must remember why they decided to fix their mortgage. Between 2006 and 2007, there were six consecutive increases by the European Central Bank, ECB. Therefore, people were panicking because there were rumours that the ECB rate could go to 6% or 7% and the banks' margins had to be added to that. The opposite is now happening. The ECB rate is now at 0%, so the banks are stepping into the space of trying to make attempts to increase their margins, so there is same argument again. First, it was people panicking to get fixed mortgage rates. Now because the ECB rate is low, the banks are saying a 3.25% rate is acceptable. What is astonishing about that is that each bank, when underwriting these tracker mortgages, stressed the loan, an element which makes sure that the customers can afford the loan, and the margins used in the stressing element are 2.75%. The banks have used their own rules and put on a margin above what they felt the stressing element was.