Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for attending, for their opening remarks and for the final report on the tracker scandal. It is a scandal. There is no point in trying to dress it up and saying that it is not. It is a terrible reflection of how banking was operating at the time. While there has been a cleanup, redress, compensation and so forth, 40,500 households were involved.

These were not just individuals in many cases, but households with families and children and worried extended families. They saw 100 people lose their private dwelling home, with 200 other investment properties lost. It is important to highlight the percentages at times. Approximately 1,215 mortgage holders received more than €100,000 in redress and compensation, with 3,240 receiving more than €50,000 and nearly 13,000 receiving more than €10,000. These people had to change their lifestyles and make significant sacrifices. Has there been any real acknowledgement or investigation into the fact that every single bank seemed to make the same mistake in the same way? We are all supposed to believe that there is no cartel or collusion involved. It seems incredible that all of these independent operating entities made the same mistakes or treated their customers wrongly in the same way.