Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 January 2018

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

Tracker Mortgages: Central Bank of Ireland

9:30 am

Ms Derville Rowland:

It is compensation to try to assist with the misery that all of this caused, although there are other elements to it too. Then there are payments for the increase in the property value, if that has occurred since, and any residual debt write-off because people may have been in difficulties. This is where the banks caused the loss of the home ownership, that is, but for the behaviour of the bank they would have been able to pay their mortgage at a lower and correct rate. This is where causation has been accepted by the lenders. It is important to say that we are going to test the banks hard on that. It is very important that they take full responsibility for all of the homes lost as a result of their conduct. That is another feature of our intensive intrusive supervisory stage that we are now entering. We are going to inspect the ones that they do not take responsibility for - not the ones that they do - to be assured about the numbers. Therefore, we might see the number in that category quite rightly increase. If caused by the lenders, they will be forced to take responsibility for it. It is important to say that the scale of legal payments and advisory payments also should quite rightly increase the more the detriment suffered. There is also provision in the schemes for vouched expenses where it goes beyond the caps. This is important because these things can be complex.