Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 4 April 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Banking Sector: Quarterly Engagement with Central Bank of Ireland

10:00 am

Ms Derville Rowland:

To add something to that point, I hear what the Senator says using that word because what we are talking about at the moment is that all the lenders and the bankers are in the scope of this tracker issue.

If one looks at the ability of each individual lender to act, they did not need an agreement with another lender to take action. They are in charge of the contractual position and it is a position between them and the customer. Then it is a position between the Central Bank and the lender regarding the code. To refer to collusion might lead one to think that there is a need for agreement as between each lender to act and there is not. Each one can act unilaterally or may have acted unilaterally and that is something that is probably relevant to consider when looking at that dimension.