Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For the past two weeks, I have been questioning bankers before the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. Could the Taoiseach address the issue whereby collectively, these banks have robbed their own customers of hundreds of millions of euro? The figures now stretch into 9,000 customers who have been denied tracker mortgage rates. We see banks that are owned completely by the State, 99.9% State-owned in the case of AIB which took the homes of 14 of its own customers - more people than are sitting on Government benches - and bankrupted others. Where will the accountability rest? None of these bankers will be held accountable for the taking of hundreds of millions off their customers, wrongly taking homes off their customers and bankrupting them. This is happening across the board. In the case of AIB, it involved 2,600 customers while it involved approximately 1,000 customers in the case of KBC, approximately 2,000 in the case of Ulster Bank, approximately 1,800 in the case of Bank of Ireland and 1,372 in the case of permanent tsb. Their customers have taken these banks to the Financial Services Ombudsman and the courts. This is not an historic issue. Up until last year, these banks were denying it. They were fighting their own customers all the way to the Supreme Court. We need accountability and for the Government to stand up as the majority shareholder, particularly in the case of AIB and permanent tsb, and use its influence to make sure these bankers are held to account.

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