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

The Central Bank has engaged the Garda on the matter and because that has been done, it is probably inappropriate for me to comment upon it except to say that this is a democracy and neither the Taoiseach nor the former Taoiseach nor the Minister for Justice and Equality can send in the Garda or the fraud squad. A complaint is made to the Garda and considered and the Garda then decides whether it needs to carry out an investigation or a raid. I do not know if Deputy Healy made a complaint to the Garda at that time but it would have been open to him to so do.

The people who should be at the front of our minds are the 20,000 individuals and families who have been affected by the scandal. Considering the average size of a household, there are probably 40,000 people behind the 20,000 accounts. Almost 1% of the country's population has been affected by this issue and subjected to unnecessary stress, financial hardship and in some cases lost their homes or investment properties. As we said last week, that banks incorrectly removed people from tracker mortgages was a serious breach of trust. We also believe some banks have been dragging their feet in solving this problem at a real human cost. We are in the middle of a complex process but affected customers should have their tracker mortgages restored and be fully compensated as a matter of priority. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, met the chief executive officers of the main banks such as Bank of Ireland, AIB, Ulster Bank, Permanent TSB and KBC and sought a detailed explanation from each bank as to the status of its tracker redress programme, an explanation for why the process has been so unbelievably slow and its plans for resolving it quickly. Although the Central Bank as regulator is a fully independent body, the Minister has contacted it to make sure it has sufficient powers and resources to ensure the banks resolve the problem. The Government will take further action in the coming weeks and months if there is not further swift progress on the matter resulting in the restoration of those 20,000 people and their families to the correct interest rate, as well as full compensation and redress.

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