Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to take this issue. I refer him to 1 July 2014 when I asked the following parliamentary question:

To ask the Minister for Finance the number of mortgage holders of each financial institution operating here whose repayment schedule and interest rate was either aligned to at the time or due to be converted to an ECB tracker rate at a point in the future who have since converted to a variable rate, waived entitlement to a tracker rate for the period of 2008 to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

The Minister's response was:

The Central Bank has advised me that they do not publish the information requested by the Deputy.

That suggests to me that the Central Bank possesses this information but does not publish it. I went into the Central Bank, and wrote to it, asking if it would provide me with the information which I, as a public representative, sought. Following a further letter to the Governor, I was surprised to receive a call from the director of consumer affairs in the Central Bank who had discussed the matter and my letter with the Governor. The Governor asked him to call me directly before responding to my letter. I will read into the record a transcript of what I noted after that call on 3 September 2014.

My office received a call today from Bernard Sheridan of the Central Bank of Ireland. I returned the call at 15.05 approx on Sept 3rd 2014 and spoke with Mr. Sheridan. After 11 minutes of verbal procrastination and [circumlocution] on a scale I have not witnessed for a while, Mr. Sheridan eventually acknowledged that the Central Bank does know the amount of mortgage accounts moved from tracker rates to variable rates - but only for accounts in arrears.

I requested this information despite being told previously in writing that the CB does not have that info - from the CB. After initially side stepping the question on numerous occasions and using vast amounts of verbiage - Mr. Sheridan under forced very direct questioning admitted being in possession of the numbers I requested and eventually agreed to furnish me with the numbers again stressing only for those in arrears.

The phone call from Mr. Sheridan began along the lines of The CB does not believe that the Banks are engaging in any practice to encourage borrowers to move off trackers - explicitly used the word "believe" which I took issue with and advised Mr. Sheridan that as a representative of the public who remain traumatised by the events of recent years and are not trusting of banks and the system of Governance - I wanted to know does the CB know the amount of [mortgage-holders who have been moved from a tracker rate to a variable rate].

Mr. Sheridan repeatedly obfuscated before finally relenting after vigorous questioning. I hope that this call has been recorded at the CB.

Some 11 months on, almost to the day on which I first submitted the parliamentary question, I have had a meeting with the Central Bank and have numerous pages of correspondence. I received a letter last month, on 24 June. It states:

You will note in particular that all lenders have confirmed that, as a matter of policy, they do not and have not required [private dwelling-home] borrowers to move from a tracker mortgage rate to a more unfavourable rate during the lifetime of the mortgage. During our inspection, we found no evidence to suggest that this is not the case. However, we identified some weaknesses in lenders' monitoring of compliance with these policies.

To this day, I remain confused, exasperated and unsure of how to get the information. I am at a complete loss to understand how the Central Bank does not know how many mortgages have been moved in the last number of years from a tracker rate to a variable rate. I was told on the telephone that it has the information while I was told in letters, it does do not have it. In all the correspondence, I have been told about policy, waving words around and playing with language, but I still cannot get the information.

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