Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This morning Deputy Healy noted the litany of appalling behaviour by key banks and building societies, including the DIRT scandal, the outrageous insurance and unit trust linked mortgage scandal which many people have now forgotten, the full rescue of AIB by the taxpayer in the 1980s and after 2008 the blanket guarantee of the main Irish banks and building societies after years of totally reckless and greedy behaviour by senior bankers up to September 2008. In recent years we have been grappling with the tracker mortgage scandal and the terrible suffering inflicted on citizens and their families who were deprived of funds of between €500 million and €1 billion in this latest appalling scam.

Central to this appalling history was the regulatory capture of the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator with the acquiescence of leading Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael politicians, including former Taoisigh, Bertie Ahern, Brian Cowen and Deputy Enda Kenny, and particularly in the recent scandal, the former Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan.

The distinguished journalist Fintan O'Toole recalled yesterday how Mark Hely-Hutchinson, as CEO of Bank of Ireland in the 1980s, tried to implement a code of ethics for his senior staff but when he brought the proposal to the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Finance, he was ignored. This episode showed clearly the huge problem in Irish legislation in regulating banks and bankers and underlies the often repeated comment of constituents that we hear many times that "there is one law for the bankers and another for the rest of us". They are referring, as the Minister knows, to Part IIIC of the Central Bank Act 1942, which was the result of an amendment made in 2004, so both pieces of legislation were passed under Fianna Fáil Governments.

Section 33AT(1) of the Act outlines the system of administrative sanctions procedure for serious misbehaviour in the banking sector. Part IIIC was inserted into the Central Bank Act 1942 by the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Act 2004. Section 33AT(1) of Part IIIC provides that no criminal prosecution may be brought against a financial service provider or person concerned in the management of a financial service provider if the prescribed contravention in question has already been the subject of an inquiry under the administrative sanctions procedure which led to the imposition of a monetary penalty.

Like other Deputies pursuing the latest scandal, when I asked the former Minister, Deputy Noonan, last May about this, he told me that where both the administrative sanctions procedure and summary criminal prosecution are available, the Central Bank has the discretion to decide which avenue to pursue. However, he said this does not absolve the Central Bank from the obligation to make a complaint to An Garda Síochána. Deputy Noonan argued that the existence of this legislation effectively means that the "double jeopardy" rule - ne bis in idem- is being applied and declared that he had no intention whatsoever of changing the law. However, it is his refusal and now the current Minister's refusal to bring in serious sanctions that has allowed the current tracker scandal and many other banking scandals to take place.

I was recently contacted by a constituent of mine who is in the pre-2006 cohort of AIB customers affected by this scandal. The young family in question entered into a contract with AIB in 2004 for a tracker mortgage. Three years later they decided to fix the mortgage for five years. At the end of the five-year term, in May 2012, they met with AIB officials to discuss their options and were told, like so many others, that tracker mortgages were no longer available and that this rate was no longer an option for them. They were put on a variable rate. This family, like many others, does not know what positive impact, if any, the various announcements the Minister has made, the October update and the guidelines and so on, will have for them. I urge the Minister to address the pre-2006 mortgages in particular.

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