Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

People want to know when this Bill will be introduced, not when the Minister is going to seek approval to draft the heads of a Bill. People want to know when it will be the law of the land that senior executives who are making critical decisions about the future of their consumers can be held to account in the manner recommended by the Central Bank. I would like to hear when the Minister expects that this regime will actually be put in place. Of course it is the case that the regime has to be constitutional, but the question of the constitutional rights of the 40,000 tracker mortgage customers who had their money taken from them also arises. Many of those people are still waiting to get that money back. There are 6,000 customers in AIB who, in my view, are still being wronged. That issue, as I said, is going to go the full distance. The Minister needs personally to examine that issue and convey a view, if he has one. Otherwise it will end up in the High Court and could be very embarrassing indeed for AIB, which is a bank in which the State continues to hold a majority share.

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