Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

He will also seek a detailed explanation from the banks as to why the process has been so slow and their plans for resolving it quickly.

While the Central Bank is fully independent as a regulator, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, is also contacting the Central Bank to ensure it has sufficient powers and resources to ensure the banks resolve this problem. The Government will take further action if we do not see further progress much more quickly, whether this is through enhanced powers for the Central Bank or increased taxation imposed on the banks by the Government. It is very much in the interests of the banks, their shareholders, management and staff to fix this situation and to do so quickly.

The Central Bank yesterday published its latest update on its industry-wide examination of tracker mortgages, which was commenced in 2015. Approximately 13,000 impacted accounts have been identified by lenders as of the end of September, an increase of 3,100 since the March report. The Central Bank is currently pursuing enforcement investigations on tracker mortgage-related issues arising in Permanent TSB and Ulster Bank Ireland, and two further enforcement investigations into other lenders are now in train. It is anticipated that more enforcement investigations will follow.

The Central Bank is not making the names of the two lenders known while the process is ongoing. As a result of the Central Bank's challenges, the two lenders are reconsidering certain outcomes of their reviews and are due to revert to the Central Bank by the end of October. If the Central Bank is not satisfied with the response from those two lenders by the end of October, at that point the Central Bank will name those two lenders. As of the end of September, lenders had rectified the interest rates applied to approximately 98% of the customers who were affected, so in 98% of cases people are now back on the interest rate they were supposed to be on. However, redress has been much slower and the initial proposals fall short of the Central Bank's expectations. So far, only 3,300 account holder homeowners have received redress and compensation, and the Central Bank now expects that all lenders must have commenced providing redress and compensation by the end of this calendar year.

See this speech in context