Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion tabled by Deputy Michael McGrath. I commend him on using his party's Private Members' time to raise this issue. I also would like to move my party's amendment, which would strengthen the motion. It is important that the House would speak with one voice on this issue. The House spoke with one voice on this issue previously. It was on 24 January 2017 when Sinn Féin used its Private Members' time to bring forward a motion on tracker mortgages. At that time we called for a firm deadline to be put in place where everybody affected would be compensated and redressed. That never happened. That motion called for legislation to be introduced that would examine individual accountability within the banks. That never happened. The motion called for many other things to be done that simply did not happen. What happened over that period is that the Central Bank, instead of imposing the firm deadline it originally put in place in terms of the banks, decided to extend it by a year. Nine months ago I sat in that chair and questioned the Taoiseach. I told him he needed to bring in the State-owned banks. I said then that there were more people outside this House who lost their homes than those who were sitting in the Chamber. We could imagine that if one of us had lost our home, far more political attention would be focused on that issue. This is not something the Minister just found out about last week or last month. He has known about this for years and years. His Cabinet colleagues have also known about this for year and years. He, like me, has been getting the letters, as Deputy Michael McGrath and other Deputies have recited in this Chamber, about the hardship and the pain suffered by these people. It was not only about losing their homes as some lost a lot more than that.

Children lost their childhood. People lost their mental health. Parents are telling us that the additional classes they needed for their child with autism did not happen. Children's development was delayed as a result of this. The Government knew all of this and it did nothing. In 2013 I started questioning the banks about the tracker mortgages. I directly asked the chief executive officer, CEO, of Permanent TSB what was going on with moving customers off tracker mortgages. He looked me in the eye and told me it was not happening. I knew it was because just a couple of weeks earlier, I had sat in the kitchen of personal friends whose home that same bank - that same CEO - tried to take from them. By how much were they in arrears? Less than €400. That is a bank that the Minister's Government owned at the time. Within minutes of seeing their contract documents, it was easy to identify that they should have been on a tracker rate. It said so in black and white: "Special condition No. 6," meaning they would revert back onto a tracker rate after the period of the fixed contract.

The Government did nothing. Four years on, that issue is still not addressed. The family had to deal with the internal complaints procedure, listen to people deny what was written in black and white, and had to go to the Financial Services Ombudsman where their case could not be dealt with because the bank the Government owned was appealing a similar decision all the way to the Supreme Court - with no action from the Government. Finally, when the bank held up its hands and said it was wrong and that it had stolen about €30,000 from the family, they were put back onto the wrong rate. The Minister's statement today did not mention that. He was completely silent on the fact that victims of the tracker scandal are being put onto the wrong rates. His statement did not mention that there is inadequate compensation. Does he think it is right or appropriate that people would get compensation in the region of €2,500 to €3,000 who had so much taken from them over a period of six or seven years, along with all the hardship they had to go through and everything that was robbed from them, not just financially but everything else? It is pathetic. The Minister did not even address that with the CEOs of the banks. Nor did he address the question of who made the decisions in the banks. It was pointed out to them by the customers that they were taking the money unlawfully. It was definitely escalated to a higher level and people in senior management definitely made the decision to hold firm. Who is accountable and when is the Government going to hold the individuals accountable?

We had the Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, going on RTÉ radio today and telling us that on top of the 13,000 known and 7,000 historic cases, there is likely to be another 7,000 cases. When are those individuals going to receive their compensation and redress? Has the Central Bank told the Minister that it is changing its position? Its officials told us in the finance committee that if the banks do not agree to compensate and redress these individuals, the Central Bank will signpost them to the Financial Services Ombudsman or the courts. That is a pathetic response from the Central Bank of Ireland. It has the powers to take the institutions to court and should not be passing the buck and asking individuals, the victims in this case, to take the risk of challenging major financial institutions, some of which are State owned, through the courts process. I listened to the Minister of State's interview. He said he noted that the banks have met the demands of Government. Was it his demand that, out of 3,500 Ulster Bank customers who are already identified - of whom 2,000 were identified this time last year because they told the finance committee that - some 2,500 would not get any compensation or redress in 2017? Was it his demand that many of them will have to wait until the middle of next year? Is that what he signed up to? For AIB it is expected that there are 450 other customers who have not been identified and who will not get redress or compensation in 2017. It will be up to the end of March 2018 before that issue is sorted. It is the same for the 600 in KBC. How the hell did the Government sign off on that? The banks are playing the Minister for a fool. What has been decided? What is the big action of the Government? The Minister is going to commission two reports. This was the biggest bank robbery in the history of the State. Families and lives were destroyed and the response is not up to the mark.

We have proposed an amendment to the motion. The Minister needs to get real about this issue. The House needs to speak with one voice on it. We are asking that there be a weekly report on the number of customers who are going to be compensated and given redress. I mean proper compensation. We ask that the Law Reform Commission's report from 2005 be implemented, something I have been raising for quite some time. That means changing the orders of the courts and introducing the legislation that was produced over a decade ago to allow for class actions. There is no doubt that hundreds of victims are going to take the banks to court. They know fine will they are not going to get accountability from Government circles or the Central Bank. Indeed, the Financial Services Ombudsman in previous times also let those customers down.

We also want to make sure that the individuals who are restored on the tracker rate are restored at the appropriate rate. Members had an opportunity to speak with one voice last time but unfortunately, the amendment from Fianna Fáil deleted my original motion, which called on the Central Bank, the Garda and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement to co-operate with a view to establishing whether individuals and corporate entities could be held accountable for their part in this scandal. That was nine months ago. Maybe the words of the victims will let this House agree that it is now time we got all of the agencies of the State working together to make sure there is individual accountability. One thing is sure, because we will not rest until it happens, and that is the tracker mortgage scandal will be dealt with. However, this scandal will replicate itself in a different guise unless we hold individual bankers accountable. What type of country are we living in, if the Minister or the Government thinks it is okay that bankers stole €500 million from their customers' accounts yet not one of them will go to jail or lose his job?

I know the Government has made a political decision. The temple was raised so high that the Government had to be seen to be acting. It pulled the banks in eventually and they told the Minister the timelines for how they are going to deal with this issue, and the Minister accepted that. Most of the information he has put in the public domain today is information we elicited from the banks a month ago. Permanent TSB told the finance committee last month that all of its customers will be restored and compensated before the end of the year. There is no news there. Ulster Bank told us that it will be the middle of next year. Bank of Ireland told us that redress and compensation will begin shortly. We knew Ulster Bank was up and running. Yet the Minister goes on RTÉ and says the Government is accepting that, because of IT problems, 2,500 customers whose accounts, as Deputy Michael McGrath said, the banks have and about whom they therefore know, whose money they are meanwhile unlawfully holding, will not get the money back until 2018. It is not acceptable. I will rest it at that.

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