Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The tracker mortgage scandal represents a damning indictment of the behaviour of our banks towards both our people and their customers. It also reveals, it would appear, a tardiness and certain reluctance on the part of the Central Bank to deal early and resolutely with the issue, particularly the systematic nature of the abuse that occurred and on that of the Government in allowing this scandal to drag on for far too long.

I am sure the Minister would agree that the banks essentially stole people's money. They caused enormous damage to people's lives and a great deal of distress to families. Mr. Thomas Ryan's heart-rending testimony to the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach last week revealed that damage in shocking terms - a stroke at the age of 47 and a nervous breakdown within the family. In many respects, it constitutes a failure of regulation and Government oversight that a man had to come before an Oireachtas committee with others to reveal all of that. What does it say about the system of regulation? What does it say about the ethos and culture of our banks that they would bring people to that level of shocking distress, resulting in individuals having come before Dáil Éireann to articulate what happened to them? We know that 102 customers have lost their homes as a result of this scandal.

The Central Bank would have had some indication of this as long ago as 2009 or 2010 - although it was not systematic at that stage - and it took it until 2015, when investigation took place, for the it to begin to be satisfied that this was systematic. It defies all credibility that 11 institutions would have acted independently. No credible explanation has been given as to how this happened in all of the banks at the same time. That matter needs to be pursued. The banks have been pathetically slow in the context of resolving these issues.

It is interesting that some weeks ago representatives from Ulster Bank gave testimony to the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach that only 40 of its 3,500 mortgage holders had got their money back. KBC indicated that it had not contacted all of its customers. Yet there were no big announcements at that stage or ministerial meetings being profiled. It took last week's meeting of the committee to get some belated action from the Government. I put it to the Minister that there is a pattern here with, for example, the Government having been negative and adversarial towards my party's Central Bank (Variable Rate Mortgages) Bill 2016, which Deputy Michael McGrath put forward-----

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