Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. He should be made aware that as far back as 2009 the Financial Services Ombudsman wrote to the Central Bank and asked that there be an industry-wide review of how customers were being encouraged to move off tracker mortgage rates and how people were being denied the possibility of returning to tracker mortgage rates. In the case of Permanent TSB, it is very clear that, having had findings made against it by the Financial Services Ombudsman and having lost in the High Court, it went as far as the steps of the Supreme Court, while at the same time a Central Bank investigation was under way, before finally arriving at the conclusion that it was wrong. It then took action on the issue.

We should be under no illusions about what we are dealing with. The banks will do whatever they have to do to encourage people to come off tracker mortgages. We now have direct experience of cases in which banks have denied customers the right to return to a tracker interest rate after a fixed period. A number of things need to happen. Any repossession cases being taken against mortgage holders who were wrongly denied the right to return to a tracker rate should be dropped. The Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform needs to investigate the broader issues involved, and I will attend a meeting of the committee after this debate, where I will make the same suggestion.

The six-year rule pertaining to the Financial Services Ombudsman means that somebody can only take a complaint to it about a matter which arose within the past six years. It will become a serious issue because many people who signed up to fixed rates in 2007 and 2008 came off them in 2010 and 2011. The clock is now ticking for such people under the six-year rule and the window will effectively be shut on them. I want the Government to take up this issue directly with the Central Bank and to use the powers it has to properly supervise this area and carry out a comprehensive investigation into how customers have been treated by the bank in respect of tracker mortgage rates. We know from its track record that it will get away with what it can.

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