Results 9,061-9,080 of 11,956 for speaker:Paul Murphy

Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Bill 2018 Second Stage: Second Stage [Private Members] (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: It was Frederick Douglass who said: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." It is incredibly relevant for those of us who want to see action to resolve the horror of the housing crisis. We need to build a movement of all those who are affected, that is, renters facing landlords who are hiking up rents and are out of control; people who cannot afford to buy a home; those on the...

Reception Conditions Directive: Motion (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: It was Tony Benn who said that the way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows how it would treat the rest of us if it thought it could get away with it. That is true, but it is a horrifying thought to think that the rest of us would be put in what, for those living in them, are open air prison camps where people have very little autonomy and very little control...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Will Mr. Byrne tell me how much AIB benefited in monetary terms from these decisions that led to scamming people either out of their right to a tracker or in terms of the wrong margin?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Please round that figure up. On the basis of the number of years this matter has been in operation, is Mr. Byrne saying that the bank benefited by around €100 million?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Will Mr. Byrne give me an overall amount that he thinks AIB benefited as a result of this matter?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Let us say it is €80 million, which is probably an underestimate. Is Mr. Byrne saying that it is a happy coincidence that the bank made a decision not to offer tracker mortgages which had unforeseen and unintended consequences in the form of a benefit to the bank of between €80 million and €100 million? Is the windfall purely a happy coincidence for the bank?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: To call it a very small mistake is really dangerous.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: It is purely what Mr. Byrne has said. He minimised the issue. He has said that, in the context of all of the money that the bank has, it is not that much money and it is purely a coincidence that the bank benefited from the mistake. He said that, first, it is a coincidence that the bank made decisions that resulted in people not being entitled to go back onto tracker mortgages.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: I am not sure about the relevance of the point made about the financial loss but I am interested in exploring the matter further. As I understand from the opening statement, the decisions made about tracker mortgages were not made as decisions to improve the profitability of the banks or to deny people's contractual rights to a tracker mortgage and that these were an unforeseen consequence....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Is Mr. Byrne saying a decision piece was taken not to continue to offer tracker mortgages to new customers? Correct. Is he saying that it was an unforeseen and unintended consequence and meant that people who were coming off fixed mortgages were not entitled to what they were entitled to, which was to go onto tracker mortgages?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: It was not a decision to improve profitability, that part of the consequence. Is Mr. Byrne saying that it just flowed as an unfortunate but automatic consequence of the first decision?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Therefore, the relevance of the loss of the €19 billion does not play into this unless one accepts-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Yes. In Mr. Byrne's narrative that explains the first decision. It does not explain the consequence unless he accepts that there was a conscious mind, in terms of the consequence. As I understand from his statement, he does not accept that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: How does that relate to the decision about margins? I understand the logic that says we have withdrawn this product from the market and, therefore, when customers come off their fixed mortgage we will not offer a tracker option to them. How does that relate to the decision to charge people an incorrectly high margin?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Did the bank find anyone who was charged a lower margin?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: Were more people on the higher margin than on the lower one? Was it more a sum of money than a hike at the other end?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: The essential argument is that in terms of the consequence of the decision not to offer tracker mortgages to new customers, existing customers were denied their contractual rights. Effectively, that was an unforeseen consequence and a happy coincidence from the point the view of the bank's profitability and that alone; it was not a happy coincidence from anybody else's point of view.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: There is another coincidence, which is the fact that all the banks that were offering tracker mortgages made similar decisions around the same time. Does Mr. Byrne have any explanation for that?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: I understand all that as to why they stopped offering tracker mortgages-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Tracker Mortgages: Allied Irish Banks (23 Jan 2018)

Paul Murphy: -----but what I do not understand is why people were denied their contractual rights. I do not understand how that flows. Mr. Byrne is saying that was a mistake made by AIB as an unforeseen consequence but the idea that the same mistake was made by all the banks at the same period of time, and that it all just happens to have improved the profitability of the banks, is quite hard to accept,...