Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

During Leaders' Questions on 5 April this year I raised the issue of the tracker mortgage fraud with the then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, and I told him what has been appearing in the media in recent weeks.

I did not have a whistleblower within the banking system but, rather, a healthy suspicion of senior bankers backed up by 30 years of banking scandals and rip-offs such as the DIRT scandal, the Ansbacher accounts, the bogus non-resident accounts and the destruction of the country by the banks during the boom-bust period. I knew, as did every Irish citizen, that the banks and senior bankers have no moral compass. The tracker mortgage fraud is a huge scandal that requires criminal investigation. I asked the former Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, to make a formal complaint to the Garda and call in the fraud squad to investigate banks. I told him that any delay in ordering a Garda investigation could lead to the destruction or alteration or both of relevant records with a view to blaming subordinates and junior staff. In an effort to protect the banks and senior bankers, he refused to call in the Garda. Six months later, all Members can see the extent of the massive fraud involving 15 banks and €1 billion and affecting 20,000 or more mortgage holders. It is abundantly clear that the scandal involves collusion by the banks in a systemic and widespread fraud. It is a scandal that the Garda has still not been sent into the banks and that no formal complaint has been made to it. Does the Taoiseach accept that if the then Taoiseach, Deputy Kenny, had agreed to my demand six months ago to send the fraud squad into the banks, much fraud could have been avoided and much trauma, pain and even deaths and self harm prevented? Will the Taoiseach at long last send in the Garda fraud squad today in order that senior bankers can be held to account? Does he accept that until senior bankers are made subject to the normal criminal fraud law, more people will become victims of this kind of bank crime?

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