Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister referred to almost 2 million tracker mortgages having been examined. While we can ask the Central Bank, I take this opportunity of the Minister being here to ask if he is familiar with the review process that took place. There are 2 million accounts, involving documentation on individual files. We have talked about 34,000 life stories; this is almost 2 million family life stories probably affecting much more than 2 million people, if 2 million mortgage accounts have been reviewed. Was that a computer iterative process or did people physically take out everybody's file in every branch of every institution?

We need to bear in mind that accounts have been moved from institutions such as Bank of Scotland, which is no longer here, to other institutions. I presume a lot of stuff is in archives. I presume many of the staff involved at the time are not necessarily still there. We are in a really complicated position. I do not expect the Minister to know the in-depth analysis of it all, but as the Minister for Finance he is ultimately the person people look to for comfort on their tracker mortgages. I am sure some people who took out mortgages with Bank of Scotland and who may have switched to another institution and paid off their mortgage still do not know whether they were affected. Will there be a process where every person with a mortgage is told: "Your account was examined. We don't believe there was anything wrong with it."

This examination was done by the Central Bank, which looked at 2 million mortgage accounts. Can we get confirmation that all the other people - outside the 34,000 - have they been told that their account was reviewed and found to be okay?