Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I welcome that but I want to make the following point. I was one of the first people to raise the issue of tracker mortgages in this committee many years ago and to call it out. The reason I became aware of the issue is an extended family member of mine was one of the first people to take a case to the ombudsman against Permanent TSB, a bank in which the State owns the majority. I sat in this person's kitchen and I know what that person went through. Unfortunately 40,000 other people have gone through the same situation. To call out my motivations about holding individual bankers or those in the financial sector to account is wrong of the Minister and it is beneath him.

The Minister answered a question that I never asked. I have repeatedly made the point that four and a half years ago the Central Bank looked for these powers to hold individuals to account. They cannot be used retrospectively for tracker mortgages. We are not that stupid. This is about diverting and making sure a second tracker mortgage scandal does not happen or that the Davy stockbroker sale of a bond to itself does not happen again. In cases like the insurance companies lying to the Central Bank, as the former Governor of the Central Bank told the former Minister, Michael Noonan, many years ago or of many other scandals, this would not happen without recourse.

It has taken the Minister four and a half years to bring forward this legislation. If that is the Minister giving priority to something, I would hate to see something he has not prioritised because that is ridiculous and scandalous. When the Central Bank publicly calls for additional powers to hold individuals to account, the Minister should be moving heaven and earth to do that. He has not done that; he has taken four and a half years to do it and that is my problem. I welcome that the Minister has belatedly done it and I will engage with this on Committee Stage as we want to strengthen parts of the Bill. When the Central Bank is looking for more powers to hold individuals to account those powers should be given. The only conclusion I can draw from the Minister's laissez-faireattitude and the delay in bringing this forward is that it is about protecting the elites. The Minister would have prioritised it if he genuinely wanted to hold them to account. If I was in the Minister's position, I can guarantee that it would not take me four and a half years to mirror legislation that has been in operation in Britain for years and to bring it before the Houses of the Oireachtas.