Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of the thousands of people who have been affected by the tracker mortgages issue. In 2008, the Central Bank notified the lending institutions about treating their customers fairly in relation to tracker mortgages. It raised the issue again in 2009 and 2010 and its website refers to concerns following an examination of tracker mortgages. In October 2012, Bank of Ireland wrote to hundreds of customers stating, "as a valued mortgage customer, we want to share some interesting findings from research we carried out recently with homeowners, like you, who have a mortgage on a tracker rate". The data was gathered by RED C in August 2012 and the letter was sent to hundreds of Bank of Ireland customers. At the time, I sought the RED C survey and its first page stated why it had commissioned the survey and its objectives, which were to encourage people with tracker mortgages to move off their product, ultimately to improve the overall profitability of the Bank of Ireland group.

That is clearly what has happened. It is not new information and I raised it at the finance committee. It has now been close to ten years and many people have not yet got their money back but have lost their homes. The figure is a minimum of €63 million and it could be up to €500 million. Nobody is clear how much was defrauded from ordinary Irish citizens. On many occasions banks and other lending institutions lied through their teeth to committees. The Central Bank held informal discussions with An Garda Síochána in April and I would like the Leader to ask the Minister for Finance to clarify whether the Garda Síochána can start an investigation without a formal complaint. The Central Bank is not about to put in a formal complaint but, given the amount of evidence and the amount of fraud that has been carried out, I want to know why. If necessary, all parties in the House should come together on this issue as they have all raised the issue regularly.