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

As the Minister knows in the case of Permanent TSB, it lost a High Court case on this matter and had findings made against it by the Financial Services Ombudsman. However, it still took it to the steps of the Supreme Court before, under duress from the Central Bank because of an enforcement investigation, it bowed to the inevitable, put its hands up and acknowledged up to 1,400 customers had been mistreated, denied a tracker mortgage rate after coming off a fixed-rate or given the wrong information about their entitlement to a tracker rate. That is a serious matter. At least 22 families lost their homes directly because of the overcharging by the bank. They are now in the process of going through a compensation scheme.

I do not believe the matter ends there, however. It was reported in the Sunday newspapers that AIB has reinstated tracker mortgage rates to certain customers who were wrongly denied the rate after coming off a fixed-rate mortgage for some time and that some customers have had a write-down of their mortgages because of this issue. Action needs to be taken on this. There must be a system-wide review by the Central Bank across the banking system as to how customers, entitled to return to a tracker rate having come off a fixed rate, were treated. The six-year limitations rule for complaints to the Financial Services Ombudsman means many customers who should have been entitled to go back on a tracker rate in 2009 and 2010 will have the window for recourse to the Ombudsman shut in their faces shortly. This issue needs to be dealt with.

See this speech in context